Reflections

 

Part A: Me, the Writer


What have I improved most on as a writer?

Genres

Before taking creative writing class I heavily focused on genres of writing that came easy to me like simple story writing and whenever I constructed short stories I knew that I wanted to try something different. So this semester, I tried to adventure out of my comfort zone and to try out poetry. I haven’t always been a huge fan of it and nor do I think I’m super good at it, but now that I look back at some of my work, I appreciate my past self for taking that step and just trying poetry out because I think some of my best pieces now on my blog is some of my poetry work. I’ve always been the one to love poetry but I never had the guts to actually try it out and see for myself how it worked. So I do think overall, it’s a genre I  want to incorporate more into my future writing.

Ideas

The purpose of creative writing class is to unleash your inner creativity and write down the words that are created within our minds, onto a piece of paper. That can be tough sometimes especially if you don’t even understand what’s going on in your head, but because of taking this class and being told to read for the first 10-15 mins of class and get inspired before being asked to write anything, I felt more energetic, enthusiastic and more excited to write. Most of my ideas that now have become somewhat good posts on my blog, have come from my journal. These were just ideas that I got from reading a couple of pages everyday of my novel, and I never knew they could turn into future blog posts by just a little bit of brainstorming and editing.

How would you explain your voice? What is stylistic of you?

In the past I always wrote with an intention of nobody getting to read my work. I wrote for myself and I never even one bit thought about anyone else reading my work. But now as I have created a blog, and the thing you have to with a blog is to make others read your hard and thought proving pieces. This has made me think about what I want other people to think about my writing and the way I write and the things I say. Because of this, I want to further develop a voice that is strong and requires critical thinking to understand but also have a unique tone and play smart with my words. I want to have a voice which portrays my writing as best I can.

As for now, I think my voice is still under construction. I do like to talk about feelings and emotions through my work and I have found a love for analogies and using literary terms like metaphors/similes to really enhance my work and to also polish the flow of my pieces. This semester I wanted to work on achieving a strong voice and I think with practice I will be able to but I can’t depend on just using literary terms. I want to capture a strong analytical approach in my writing and for someone to use my writing as an exemplar. I want to also establish sense of great depth and powerful language throughout my work.

 

As a mentor writer, what advice would you give to future creative writers?

Personally, my biggest advice to writers is to always start with a positive mindset and to always continue to write. What I mean by that is, let’s say you started to write an article, short story, poem, etc, and you get stuck or endure a writer’s block, don’t leave the story there and whatever you do, DON’T scrap it! Always come back to things afterwards. Because chances are you may have a different approach to that specific story or whatever you were stuck on, and you might feel more inspired to write it now that you’ve had some time away from it. Take breaks when you need them because no one can say focused for too long and if the process of writing feels hard and tiring, then you know your doing it right. Writing doesn’t come to everybody nor does it have to, but you can achieve anything if you put your mind to it and have some faith.

 

 

 

 

 

My Future goals and plans regarding writing

I so very much enjoy writing in my free time but if someone asks me to write something I just can’t do it on the spot. The best ideas that I get are when I’m writing on my own with no expectations from anyone else. That being said, I enjoy writing a lot and I want to be able to write on the spot but I can’t see myself doing writing professionally as I have other plans to pursue but it can definitely become a great hobby and who knows I may implement this new hobby into my job somewhere. Maybe by writing mini articles or my own book about my journey in medicine. You never know. As for right now, and the next couple of years, I want to see my writing improve by incorporating different genres and creating a unique voice with the help of adding more detail into my work.

 

 

Part B: Me, the Blogger


What do you like about your blog and what would you criticize?

If I’m being honest with you and myself, I don’t really find my blog to fit my personal aesthetic at all. I’m not the type of person to go for bright colours and  that being pink of all colours! When this semester first started, I knew that I wanted to do something different with my blog and something that was different than what people expected of me. And yes, I did fulfill that because everyone knows that pink is not my colour. But, I do like the layout of my blog and colors aside, I like the overall feel of my blog as most of my posts tend to be bright, wholesome and sweet. A piece of criticism that I have for my blog is the header part. It took me years to try to make that rotating rose giphy fit the way I wanted it to be at the top of my blog. Yeah, it still doesn’t. I just gave up and I decided to just leave it as is. Overall, I don’t mind the look my blog but there are different areas where I want some changes to take place.

 

Captivating Student blogs

 

What professional bloggers have I explored?

I haven’t had the time to search many professional bloggers but I looked at a few lifestyle blogs because those are the ones that intrigue me most personally. I found an interesting blog and the owner was a woman named Gala Darling and she had a very immerseful story of her life and her struggles as a young adult. She was suffering from an eating disorder and had depression before moving out of her home in New zealand. Her blog mostly is full of self love and she is also a bestselling author of a book called, Radical Self-Love: A Guide To Loving Yourself And Living Your Dreams. Her work helps women find their voice, live without fear, and fall in love with life. I’m definitely going to look into more of her posts and take some notes.

 

Part C: Me, the Student


Discuss an “Aha” from Creative Writing Class

Being in creative writing class has been such an inspiring and self impacting few months as we learned many things throughout the course and I would like to share a few of the many remarkable moments that I personally have learned a lot from. The first, no doubt was visiting Bow View Manor, the home of seniors. In the beginning I was frightened from the thought of visiting elders in their homes and seeing their reactions of a class of annoying teenagers coming to visit them. It felt absurd to me, I don’t know. But as soon as we got assigned our elderly folk to go and talk to and converse with, it changed my perspective completely. I never grew up around or with my grandparents or anyone wiser or older than my parents, so I have never really spoken to elderly people and that being face to face too. The beautiful soul that I had the pleasure to get to know was named Goldie and she was a pure angel. She has a heart of gold and I could talk to her days and days on end. She was so understanding and her perspective of the world was just insightful and I think I have learned so much from her in the 25 minutes that I spoke with her than I have with my parents my whole 16 years of living. She had some admirable characteristics and her story was sorrowful yet insightful all the same. Happiness was her main goal and she for sure gave it to many and received from all too. I’m grateful that I got the chance to meet someone so humble and bright because otherwise I had very low expectations going into this whole journey and I’m glad that I was impacted by it in an extremely positive way.

In class we had made 3 trips to the river and I feel very blessed to have my high school be located near a river that was literally walking distance. Going to the river was something that was special to me because as a kid I used to live by the river in an apartment when me and my family first arrived in Calgary. So I have created countless memories growing by the river. Unfortunately some of those have been left behind because we’ve moved and there still is a river near us but its not as close as it used to be because of construction taking place near it. Getting the chance to go back and visit the river and my young self was an unexplainable feeling as it brought back memories and smiles. My last experience of us visiting the river in class was probably the best. We got to write down inspiring messages on rocks near the river with sharpies. I read some of my friends’ messages and some of them hit me hard. Now I would like to visit the river near my own home and not only reliving my past memories but in hopes to bring them to life.

 

What have I accomplished as a reader? What is my  PLAN to read next?

With the help of tracking my reading through my monthly reading ladders, I can full heartedly say, that I have read more this semester than I think I have ever read since starting highschool. I always thought reading and writing are the most important things to do in order to even achieve above an 80% in english. I’ve known that and yet I still didn’t try it or even do it. Sadly, I had english last semester so I couldn’t see my english mark improve, but there is always next year and if I keep reading hopefully, I can strive towards getting that 90% in english that I’ve always wanted. That being said though, I’ve read a good amount of grade level reading books, higher level reading books, short stories, poems, magazines and blogs this semester. My plan in the summer is to definitely check out more professionally created blogs, (as I surprising enjoy doing that and also get my hands on shakespeare).

 

What are your next steps to improve as a writer?

As a writer, now that I’ve taken these key skills from creative writing class, I would like to test them out and see if grade 11 is going to become a different but better year for me. This summer I’m going to pick out books that have strong vocabulary and require a higher level of critical thinking. I also want to keep track of my reading ladder and keep updated with my reading goals.

 

Part  D: Me, the FAN


WRITER SEMINARS: How has studying published authors changed/improved your writing?

Definitely, there have been writers that I was clueless about before my peers in class gave a presentation on them and their writing styles. I enjoyed that and it helped me as a writer (who is still developing many of these skills), to seek out and be open to different, unique and challenging authors who have for sure changed the outlook of reading/writing for the better. I gained a sense of how to incorporate neat techniques into my writing, how to play with different genres and still continue to have an outstanding, beautiful flow.

 

Am I happy with the author I chose to study?

I’m skeptical of the author, me and my group studied, as it wasn’t my go to choice, but we decided to go with it in the end. Rick Riodran definitely is an interesting and influential writer. He was the one who got many of us into reading but if I had the chance to go back and pick another author I would choose an individual who writes in great depth, uses challenging vocabulary and experiments with different emotions and themes for the overall piece. During a random weekend of me just finishing up on homework, I came across a synopsis of a novel called “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and the title first and foremost intrigued me as it sounded as children’s cartoon but it was the name of the extraordinary novel by Mark Twain. I’ve heard of this novel before but I didn’t think it would be my type or style. As soon as I finished reading the synopsis I went ahead and placed a hold on it in the Public Library. I have started reading it and for now it seems to be a simple read but I know Mark Twain isn’t an ordinary author. I want to read it slowly and annotate as I go so I can not only build those skills for the future, but understand the story to its full potential. After just diving into the first few pages, I really liked how Mark Twain’s able to hook the reader and he’s a super talented author. Hopefully I can pick up some techniques as I go. I hope to finish this novel soon and I feel as though he would make a great author to study for a writer’s seminar.  

 

How has studying different authors improve my sense of writing?

Personally, for me studying different authors was greatly inspiring as I got to learn so much. My doors have been open to endless possibilities and now I have no excuse for not knowing what to tackle this summer. Although it’s hard to choose, I think the author who was most influential for me was Khaled Hosseini. I’ve only read the ‘Kite Runner’ from him and I remember it being the most amazing book I have ever read and I tried to get a hold on ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’, but other things came in between. I definitely want to read the next book as it’s just as good. Something about Khaled Hosseini’s writing makes you crave for more. It’s so beautifully written. You can clearly see the provision and time he puts in writing every line. Most of his quotes are powerful indeed and though none fail to mesmerize me with their eternal beauty but some of my favourite lines of his are :

“One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs. Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her wall.”

“And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”

These quotes have within them such grand authority, power and strength. I love how easily he gets the message across but his words can lay on your shoulders forever.

 

 

Part E: Me, the Critic of my work


‘Her Musical Heartbeat’, is a piece that was inspired and came out of one of my very own journal entries from this semester. There was a quote in my reading one day that inspired me to write a poem based on an aching heart. Usually in my writing I do consider many themes and this one in particular  portrays themes of pure pain, loneliness and mourning lost love. This piece did not come directly from my journal as I had a different idea of which I wanted to take on at the time, but it took a turn and I ended up tweaking my writing and it turned into this piece. This poem essentially is about a girl who has become miserable and anxious over the time because of her increasing sorrow and pain from her last love. It creates a story for a hopeless romantic and I’m proud of this piece as the inspiration for it came from just a couple of lines in a random novel I was reading at the time, and I’m glad that I allowed myself to think freely without any restrictions and putting down some ideas to create this work. At some points in this poem I think I could have added more detail and make it a bit longer as it is kind of short. In all honesty though, I like how this poem is formatted and how it is a bit shorter in length because I think it leaves more room for the reader to understand the struggle of the character of this piece and to really sympathize and understand what is truly going on in her life. While reading this piece, I did have to face some issues that came up because I wanted this piece to flow smoothly and have some great examples of alliteration and similes. At times, it was hard choosing words that fit in and sometimes I chose a word and I had to change it because it just didn’t allow the poem to flow. Also, the amount of time I changed the title of this piece was annoying and it made me frustrated because this poem is related to music and it’s kind of in a sense trying to relate the girl’s feelings of heartache to the sound of music and a piano, so I knew I wanted to have the title as ‘Her musical’ … something, but then better ideas came into mind. I got some feedback on it from my mom and she gave me a few more ideas, and let’s just say I was stumped on naming this piece for a while. But like I always do, I’ve learned my lesson form various tests and quizzes, to always pick the right answer by going with yout gut feeling and your first choice. So, I stuck with my first choice ‘Her Musical Heartbeat.’ Now looking back at it, I do like the title of this piece and I don’t think I would change it. I enjoyed writing this piece and I hope it got the message that I wanted to fully get across, which is not only mourning a lost love but also a lost hope.

 

Another piece that I spent a lot of thought on and was hesitant to post but did anyway, was a short creative story on my blog called, ‘Conspicuous Secrets.’ Firstly, I came up with the title of this piece genuinely pretty quickly because I knew what I wanted this story to be about and this is actually an incomplete post. It’s not the whole story, it is only the first part. So, I may make the second part to it as time goes by and I’m thinking it will have a total of 3 parts so I’m excited to create it. This is a story that I was inspired by and it’s actually based on a video game. So the initial story is inspired by a game called Detroit Become Human and I’ve never played this game and it came out in late 2016 but I read the plot of the story and my best friend owns this game and I saw him play a couple of parts and it’s not like a violent video game it’s more based on a storyline and you have to fulfill missions and things but overall the story arch it was pleased me because I enjoyed seeing the characters and the game was like a movie it was so smooth and the ending was incredible. This story is based on some parts of it and some parts I created on my own. This genre of this story is a bit different for me and my style of writing. I incorporated bits of sci-fi which I’m not a big fan of but I think it went well with the story and I’m glad I adventured out of my norm. In summary, this piece is about a female protagonist who has unusual and asburd abilities and she isn’t exactly magical but she was a science experiment done by labs and she’s trying to follow her truth and she wants to figure out her past but she only can by getting through the present. The overall process of writing this story was quite good because I knew where I wanted to take it from the beginning and as I said it’s still not a complete piece so I’m currently working on the rest of the parts to this story and hopefully it will become complete.

 


Images Used:

 https://www.123rf.com/photo_55723223_stock-vector-vector-illustration-with-hanging-grunge-light-bulb-with-watercolor-splash-modern-hipster-sketch-styl.html

 https://www.tumblr.com/search/your%20daily%20dose%20of%20motivation

→ https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/william-shakespeare/love-sonnets-of-shakespeare/9780762455577/

 

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