Creative writing. That’s what the class is called. When I added it to my schedule for the last trimester of the year, I was very excited. I hadn't written anything in a long while, even though I’d wanted to, and I thought this was the perfect opportunity to begin again. The ironic and painful problem of this class was that I ran out of creativity. I used to be creative. I used to write stories and create characters that were unique and, usually, original. But over a long period of art block (since I enjoy drawing comics) and writers block, I lost a lot of creativity and imagination, making this class more frustrating than it should have been. It was agitating at first. I always had the most difficult time starting a piece, I never finished any of the ones I did start, and ended up totally unsatisfied with about 85% of the pieces I was actually able to complete. Hell, I’m not even satisfied with some of the ones on this blog. I had to settle with a few for the sake of making a deadline. But the ones I am content with, the ones I am actually proud of, are the products of some rather interesting, effective, and, in the end, brilliant methods.
Method 1: Multi genre
My teacher, Mr. Theune, spent every week focusing on a different genre of literature. A few of my favorites were the Pantoum poem, the two word poems, and the six word memoirs (having these three already on the blog should be a dead give away). These methods were great for an amateur writer who is almost completely inexperienced with literature outside of fiction novels, school assigned readings and English class essays (a.k.a. me) to both experiment and explore writing in a new way. Some were challenging, some were boring, some were fun, some were a bit too much. But I discovered something about myself in the process: I always thought of myself as a fictional writer (if anything in the literary world). But I don’t think that’s true anymore. I think I’m more of a poet. And I like that.
Method 2: Peer inspiration & evaluation.
Another fun system we developed in this course was student inspiration. Every student in the class was assigned a certain day to present something to inspire the rest of us for our writing sessions that started the beginning of class. This was a pretty cool thing to see every day. It provided the class with topics and ideas that we would have probably not thought of on our own or not have considered worth writing about. And this always led to some interesting, deep, or humorous stories that we would share with one another. But there was another system we used in our writing that I did not particularly enjoy: the peer evaluation. The idea for this was that we all would split into separate groups and share pieces with each other and provide feedback. Now, the idea of this is not a bad one. I actually liked this idea. However, I did not find it to be very effective for myself. Often times I’d share and ask for critiques and would get very little in return. Not to say the feedback was invalid, it just was not quite satisfactory.
Method 3: Life
As you can probably deduce from what I have already posted on this blog, a lot of my writing is inspired and based on things that have happened recently in my personal life (this does NOT include the popcorn AIDS from my two word poem post). This class took place during the end of my senior year, so a lot happened that ended up bleeding into my writing. Even some things that happened last year bled into these pieces. But that’s because each event that transpired was connected in a way. Like a chain made by the events that life brought me The links of this chain include transition, seeking belonging, friendship, love, more transition, and most recently, heartbreak. I’d be lying if I said that I didn't wish for some of these things to have never happened. But I’d also by lying if I said that I regretted them happening in the first place. Call it a paradox if you will, but like I said before, each event was and is connected. Without some of these painful and damaging experiences, I would not have been able to link together the things that were the best and most amazing adventures I have ever been on. They not only fueled my writing, they fueled my living. And yes, some memories I’d like to forget, but I dare not. Because if I do, I might forget the memories that mean the world to me. Even through all the pain and agony, the times I shared with my friends, nay, my family are worth every second. Every, fantastic second.
