Final Reflection

1. I’ve written many things in this class that I never thought I would. It is important to note that I am guilty of laziness, and that some of the work done in class is not present in my own archive. As a result, I’m only going to outline the work I have done in class. The things I really love writing about in this class are works of fiction. I like creating a new scene or premise: starting fresh. Although it is sometimes interesting to write about the past and our own lives, I think that creating works of fiction is what really stimulates creative writing, in essence. It is true that works of fiction come from ourselves or past events, maybe even something standing right in front of us, as I have come to find out. In my mind, fiction stems from something we have experienced or are currently experiencing. In many pieces of writing, it’s not very clear what the source of inspiration for it was. I used to think it was just what popped up in someone’s head, something of random genius. Although there are some cases of this actually happening, I think that whenever someone writes, they are using their own life as the starting point. Whether they know it or not, a part of them is in their work. The source of inspiration we’ve all drawn from in this class, at least in my opinion, is from ourselves and others: our responses to everything we experience. Unexpectedly, I started off this class with a strong piece of writing. This piece I named “Joys of War.” When you read this piece maybe you think of veterans in your family or veterans of your family that have passed. That wasn’t my direct inspiration for this piece; it was actually a piece from the various objects Mrs. Fraser had given us for the past week. We wrote descriptions about each object, and went on an object hunt later that week. We were then supposed to write about an object from the ones she had given us and post it on our blog. This is how “Joys of War” came to be. The inspiration for that piece is actually a blue-striped box she laid out for us, the very one I incorporated into the story. Another notable piece of writing I want to discuss is one that is… somewhat puerile. That writing would be titled “Dream Threads” in my blog, as I was too ashamed at the end of writing it to give it a good title. The story comes from things called dream threads. Dream threads are a description given to an event within a dream to characterize it in a single sentence. We were assigned to use dream threads that my classmates wrote and put them at the beginning and end of the story, then fill the gaps. Well, on a whim, I used Kinzie’s fear of kangaroos as the ending sentence, and wrote a piece on the kangaroos taking over the world. Onto the next significant piece, one that I actually really loved writing, “A Foreign Country & Its Executioner.” This is probably not the most original storyline out there, but hey, I liked it. It’s a short introduction to a post-catastrophic narrative, in which the character seeks to pick up the pieces of his own mistake. The story is similar in construction to the dream threads story, in that we took famous first and last lines of novels and filled the gaps between them. The only other well-made piece in my blog is the story “A Special Kind of Brew.” The inspiration for this horror story is pretty weird. All I remember is being up at 3 a.m., trying to catch up on all of the work in this class that I so lazily dismissed. During that night, I had a candle burning, and the candle’s scent was called “vanilla chai.” Something awful clicked in my head and thus this story was born. Hence the reference to chai in the story. Also, I really liked writing my 101 things. It was much more difficult than I imagined it to be, but I still enjoyed it, maybe because I could actually take a step back and see how I identify myself. Overall, I’ve written some things that I’m extremely proud of in this class, and I would definitely take it again with some more effort put into it. I came in pretty lacking in confidence of my creative writing, and I’m still pretty skeptical of it, but this class actually made me consider it as a future path for myself. That’s easily worth about as much if not more than any other class at Kickapoo has given me.

2. Next I want to detail the pieces of my classmates and authors that we have read about this semester. Many of my classmates are tremendously talented writers, and reading their pieces helped me develop my own writing. I loved reading everyone’s 101 facts, they were all very interesting. I have to give a special mention to my table, they are all so gifted in writing. These wondrous people are Liana, Lauren, Taylor, Kinzie, and Katie. A few pieces of theirs that I enjoyed: Liana’s “Their Secret Wonderland,” Lauren’s “Amber,” Taylor’s “Broken Dishes,” Kinzie’s “Ambiguous Measures,” and Katie’s “Deadly Treachery.” Each of these stories have their own flair and personality, and I can vaguely see bits and pieces of their authors in them. Sort of like the expression “clear as mud”.

3. The name for my blog still sounds kind stupid to me, but it’s grown on me. The name comes from my hours spent in middle school sitting there daydreaming and dozing off. It’s probably for the best, but I wish I could still daydream as vividly as I used to. Sadly, class requires attention now, and daydreaming will probably only occur in my free time, when I am usually not bored. It’s strange that daydreaming almost has a requirement of being bored for me. I digress, back to blogging. It was cool to monitor the statistics tab during my time in this class. Liana and I would often see what countries would peek at our blog, and strangely enough, at least one person if not more from several countries at least opened our blog on their browsing device. I think it’s somewhat surprising to get views from different countries, I wonder how they came upon a class of high schoolers? I’m not entirely sure if I will continue to post on this blog. I will for sure if I write a new piece of writing, but that’s not that common during the school year. I don’t know if I’ll even remember it after this school year, but I hope maybe I can stumble upon it one day and revisit it.


4. I’ve never kept a journal before in my life, and I’m not sure if I was really into it enough to give it a proper evaluation. I honestly don’t think I will update my journal at all. The only thing I really liked about having a journal is that if I had something that popped into my head, I had my journal there to write it down. I like blogging more than journaling, but the only reason I find journaling fun is that you can just put anything in there. Random thoughts, events of the day, anything. No one else can read it but you, whereas with a blog, it’s totally out there. It’s a matter of convenience, privacy, and sometimes sentimental value. Journals are a tangible thing that you can hold and feel the tattered pages and worn binding, it would probably give a nostalgic feeling. Also, journals contain your handwriting, which is special to many people. It’s more you than blogging is, I suppose.



5. A journal entry that actually barely holds any creative content, but was really fun doing is whenever our tables listed as many types of Halloween candy as we could. I think it was so fun because nearly every time someone said a candy, someone else would have a connection, memory, or feeling associated with that candy. Although I see this often, it’s still somewhat surprising that a simple thing such as candy can evoke such an incredible discussion.



6. I honestly don’t know what my favorite piece I’ve written is, but if I had to pick, I think I’d pick “Joys of War.” Here is the last paragraph of the story: 

“Later that night, with his remaining comrades gathered around him, he repeats the adage that everyone has come to love. The consolation is short-lived, and soon the gears of conflict begin to crank and twist once again. And so James treads on, living day-to-day, night-to-night, reveling in the daily moment of peace and homeliness that has been passed on from his fallen comrade.”


7. Looking towards the future, I hope creative writing stays in my life. I took this class to explore a path that I used to dismiss as something that just wasn’t for me, or something that took luck to be successful in. I’ve always written small pieces of imagery to just describe a whole new world, fantasies and brand new realms. Entertainment, specifically video games, inspired me several times to create. I used to think that that was just something I did for fun and that I could never make it in the creative writing world as an author. But this class has changed my perspective. Hearing all the positive feedback from my classmates, and most of all, Mrs. Fraser, I now consider writing as a possible future for me. As I said up there, fiction is definitely the genre I would write. I just think that making those worlds I made as an underclassmen have something actually happen in them would be awesome. Perhaps I could reuse some of them for a setting of a novel if I ever decided to write one, which I might. Making a world come alive with something more than just a landscape or a vision, that’s what I would write.


8. I’m going to recycle a bit of advice I got from one of my other teachers a few days ago. To summarize what she told me: do what you, that’s right, you, want. Don’t do what you’re expected to do just because you’re expected to do it. If you don’t want to go to college, don’t go to college. If you want to start your own business, start your own business. If you want to write, write. What I’m trying to say is, life is about pure experience. Life is about doing what you want to do. Not to be financially stable or successful, but what you want to do. No matter what anyone says about writing not being a viable career or it’s not financially stable or whatever, it doesn’t matter. The short and sweet version: don’t be discouraged.