Week 7

Still working with short stories, this week we read stories in the Indiana Review book. I enjoy reading all the short stories, some longer than others, out of that book; it has a wide variety of different types of stories to look at, which I find very helpful! Monday night, we were to read five different stories from different authors out of IR, and then on Wednesday in class, we were split into groups and assigned a short story, some of which were from the homework. Once again, I really enjoyed this activity because I like working together with groups, it helps me better understand the homework and also the actual assignment given in class.

After diving deeper into the Indiana Review book, I have realized that short stories can be just as fun, and yet difficult, as poems are. After reading more and more examples of different styles that a short story can be written in, has definitely made me enjoy reading, along with writing them. While finishing my homework tonight, which was to take one of our own poems written previously in the semester, and add language and image to it, and form it into some style of a short story, I noticed that you can take any piece of writing and form it into a short story. I liked transforming an old poem into a short story, because we already had most of it written, without adding examples of language and image, and then of course more descriptive words to make the story better flow together.

I really noticed the artistic discipline some authors have to face, if given strict guidelines. This is another reason why I believe copying a style in the form of a short story is challenging, because some authors are lenient in their guidelines, and write in no particular style, while other authors are very strict in their work. The artistic process also plays a big role in writing short stories, especially after reading through Indiana Review, I noticed this because it takes a talent to be able to write in certain ways, or about a particular thing. For the most part, as much as I enjoyed writing poems, short stories are seeming more and more exciting than before!