Final Post

With the final class of the semester hours away, it's times to reflect on the past several months. I have really enjoyed this class. Once I was able to break out of my nervous bubble, I was able to really find some creativity that I didn't think I had. Not only was this experience beneficial for getting used to public speaking, but I have also learned several cool methods of revision that I will be able to use in a wide-range of subjects for years-to-come.

The end of the semester projects have been fun. I really liked the way that circle's group journal, [fourteen]2, turned out. The cover we chose was neat, and Heather did a cool job of incorporating creativity throughout the various authors' poems. My role in the group, aside from the various formative details we decided as a group, was to edit. I enjoyed reading Charity Stowe's Poems and thought she did a good job of responding and editing her piece to the suggestions of an editor.

To conclude on what will be my last blog in this class, I have really enjoyed the material and have found several methods associated to the creative and revision processes helpful. I feel that the teacher's approach to use mimicking poetry in order to spark our own original creativity very helpful. I play the guitar and have always used sample riffs from various artists to come up with my own songs. In that same sense, we have learned our own poetry/short-story aesthetics through interpret and copying famous poets structure.

Final Blog

I cannot believe that the semester is coming to an end. This class really has taught me a whole lot. From words, to poems, to short stories, I have realized that words really do have a great significance. The way one uses his words can bring its meaning to life, and can have more of an overall inspiration on others around him. The tone and rhythm of one’s words can really make a difference in its meaning. It’s crazy how common everyday words can mean so much! It is the way words are arranged that make its meaning creative. I believe creativity is necessary to thrive, but every person is definitely creative in their own way. Reading a piece of work on paper can be completely different from listening to a person read the poem or story. Sounds of different writings can constantly change from person to person. The poem or story can be taken several ways. This proves that people can be creative without even being aware of actually doing so.

This week we continued revising and finished putting the lit journals together. Our group is still finishing the layout, which I am excited about. I have had a lot of fun in the process of putting it together. We have also been working on our own portfolios. I am currently finishing up my work. I can honestly say that I’ve had a lot of fun putting my portfolio together. In my opinion, it was definitely the most enjoyable part of this semester. At first, I found revising a bit challenging, but as we continued to revise I found it easier and easier. Seeing my own work improve is really nice. I love the feeling of accomplishment!

Week 14

Can't believe class is almost done! This semester flew by so quick! Well to get started I suppose throughout this semester the revision process all semester taught me that I'm the least creative person when it comes to writing! Also I learned that the way you say something can completely change a tone, or a meaning of what you're trying to say. For instance if 10 people wrote one sentence about how love makes them feel, you would have 10 very different sentences and some would probably include some cliches, some may be something you would have never thought of, and others could be very bland. it is all on how you interpret it.

Last week we talked about words and sounds and I personally thought it to be a tad tricky. I didn't really understand where we were getting at with the sound and mouth movement thing, and I didn't see much of a point to be honest. When we watched the videos, I get the performance and how the way you read your work can change they way people take the piece, but I guess I was just confused with the sounds.

I think creativity is very necessary to thrive, but not everyone is creative in the same way. One who is not the most creative writer could be a great painter or whatever there are lots of different ways to be creative. I personally think I lack creativity in writing, but I am creative in many other ways, I work in retail so I experience being creative with merchandising. I've noticed that pictures inspire my writing and I find it much easier to write when inspired by a picture!

The most enjoyable thing for me this semester was probably writing poem, even though I am not the most creative person, it was still nice to get out things you wanna say with poetry.

Final Blog

This semester has been a wild ride. I was so much busier than my first semester, and my grades have showed it. I think though, that I've learned a lot more this semester than I did the last. I've learned more about writing, more about being a student, and more about myself. Particularly as someone who writes in his spare time taking a class like A190 is a sort of measuring stick to let me know how comfortable I feel with where I'm at in my creative works. I also think that it's made me feel more secure in what I'm doing.

My favorite thing about this semester has been getting to read all the other cool pieces in class, and as we workshop see others either accept my ideas and edit their pieces or have them explain why they disagree and get a better understanding of what their works were all about. It is just really neat to be part of someone else's creative process. The hardest part was going back and doing that for myself. I find it much easier to view a piece critically when I'm doing it from an outside viewpoint rather than trying to look at my own work and edit it.

There's still lots to do this week for finals, but I'm glad to have the journal behind me and to work on my portfolio. After all the reading I've been doing lately I'm excited to go back and tear one or two more pieces apart and put them back together like Dr. Frankenstein!

Final Blog! Week 14

This semester has flown by, I cannot believe this is already our last class blog! This week was a busy week, trying to get our literary journal organized and ready to present to the other group, and also trying to get all my revisions done for my final portfolio. It's definitely been a stressful week for this class, and it's only going to become more stressful. For the lit journals, I was in the Circle Group, and was assigned to make the table of contents, and also edit three different pieces of writing, which wasn't bad at all; however, trying to also make sure that my writings are at their best for the other group meant a lot of time and effort went into this literary journal this week.

On Wednesday, we discussed the significance of words, which was actually really interesting! When I read anything, I never stop and actually break down the words, and try and hear all the different tones, pitches, etc., but I know realize that certain words are there for a reason, and without even one specific word, it can completely change the entire piece, which blows my mind! After learning about this, we were then told that we were going to have to basically do this to one of our own writings, whichever one we choose, and read it in front of other students on our last day of English, which I'm not too excited about doing.

The only major struggle that I've come across is with my final portfolio. It's difficult for me to make so many revisions to one piece of writing, having to change it, sometimes completely different from where I wanted it. Without the revising tips, I always become blank, so I have really been trying to use those tips as much as possible. Overall, I greatly enjoyed this class, and would definitely recommend this course to someone! I learned a lot of new things, and have certainly improved my writing skills!

Final Blog

This is the final blog as we reach the end of the semester. This week we continued with revision exercises and work on our Literary Journals. Our homework was to revise, revise, revise until we have sixteen little darlings for our portfolios. We also chose a piece of our work that we will read outloud on Wednesday the 7th and analized it for sounds and word patterns.

Revision, yuck! Ok it isn't the worst thing on earth, it just happens to be incredibly time consuming. I spent over fourteen hours working on just one revision. I suppose if I were a writer this would be useful but currently its just exhausting since I have a work life outside of school that is extremely demanding. I still feel a bit vague about the "significantly different" requirement so for the most part I'm writing almost entirely new pieces based off of a theme from the original or the opposite of the original. I understand what we are doing as exploring different ways to write poetry and short stories, sort of forcing us to work outside of our comfort areas. What I don't particulary care for in the end result is that I end up with sixteen things that all rough drafts. I never come to that one final work that is complete, amazing, and right. I want a finished piece! I've recognized how much I prefer to write Dr. Seuss style poems. Also, there is something almost druglike when a story grabs ahold of your mind as you are writing it and transports you inside the action. It's the feeling I get when I'm reading a Stephen King novel only generated purely from my own imagination

I'll finish with the most significant thing about the creative process which I've learned from this class. For me it is just sit down and write. Don't be afraid to put crap down on paper. It doesn't have to be perfect the first time. You may have an amazing new idea from something that was junk the first time around. .

Final Blog!

The final blog is already here! The semester has gone by so fast. Throughout the semester I've learned that the creative process can be somewhat difficult...or maybe that's just me. Coming up with the right idea and then finally writing it down can take forever, plus with revisions, it can take a long time.

I really did enjoy this class. At times I felt frustrated and dejected with my work and inspiration, but eventually I would work past the discouragement and all the praises or constructive criticism was worth the hair pulling in the end. I learned so much from this class about poetry and I'm truly glad, it has helped me grow as a writer.

I personally enjoy the written pieces because they are more private and personal, at least to me anyway. I'm not very comfortable with public speaking so writing my pieces were preferable because I could just show someone the poem or read it to them individually. But most of all of our writings and exercises were enjoyable and I learned a lot from all of them.

Final Blog

I'm surprised the last blog came so soon! This week I've mostly been drowned in writing final papers, so it was nice to have the portfolio at well, since it was much more fun/relaxing. I actually ended up writing a few new pieces, since my original work had been revised multiple times before I turned it in (which is usually just how I go about writing). We're also very close to done with the Lit Journals, which were generally fun to work on.

I'm not exactly looking forward to reading my own work this week (I've done readings before, and they're very... unnerving--I usually prefer to talk to about my writing much more than actually read it), but it will be interesting to see how everyone else approaches it. A lot of time it depends: I have a strange belief that most literary writing isn't meant to be read out loud (sort of like Koch says, it's a "different language"--or, according to Samuel Delany, more theoretically, it's an "entirely separate rhetorical space... that happens to share the same vocabulary"), but sometimes it really does bring new life to the work.

Other than that: today I watched a video of Bukowski reading out loud that I really liked, which was interesting because he kept taking shots of whiskey between stanzas. It's extremely cold outside and winter will be here for real in just a few days.

Week 14

We're finally at our last blog! I have really enjoyed writing in our blogs every week to recap what I was taught and have learned. It's something different and creative and has helped me write out my thoughts about our class. This week we discussed the sounds and meanings a word can have. I missed Mondays class, but from the looks of the powerpoint sent out, we were to choose one of our own poems, or short/shorts and analyze the sounds and mouth movements it takes to perform the work and the relationship to the emotion in the piece. I have always known there's significances in each word and by relating the work to music or rhythm can create a different emotion, all based off how something is said or worded. Along with the emotions of words, we continued our editing process for our final portfolio pieces and class journal. Editing each week makes me realize even more how significant creativity is and all the differnet ways there is to revise and look at a piece of work. It has opened my eyes alot and I have noticed alot more about poems and its elements that I would have never seen before.

In all I have really enjoyed this class. At the begining of the semester I thought I wouldn't learn anything too important, but now that this semester is all most over I can say that taking this class has opened my eyes up to alot of elements in writing and reading. I've learned different processes on how to imitate others works, how there's many ways to write a poem and short story and most importantly how to open my creativity up. I never knew too much about these online journals and blogs and how unique they are. This class was differnt from anything I've taken so far and have really enjoyed how we were always doing somehting differnet with all the class activities! The thing I enjoyed most about this class was looking at other poets work then imitating their style with our own work. It taught me alot and was fun at the same time. There is alot of great creative students in our class and working with each other has helped me on seeing things in different ways when piecing our works together.

Final Blog

Hard to believe this is the last one (and not having one last week is really throwing me off my rocker). However, I did like how we focused on the sound of the poems. It's one of those small things I usually wind up forgetting about until someone mentions it. But being able to look over my poem and say it aloud, concentrating on how it sounds, helped me figure out if reading it and saying it were conveying the same messages. It also gave me idea son what I could do to the poem to kind of make the patterns I was finding stick out more or less in a piece.

One thing I'm nervous for though is actually reading it aloud to others. There is a stark difference between saying it to yourself in the privacy of your room, or muttering it in a classroom, than actually sitting in front of others and reading it. If my experience is anything to go by, my heart is going to settle in my throat and it's going to feel like I'm trying to talk through cotton. And be louder than the drumming in my chest. While trying not to garble my words up when I notice I've made a mistake. Maybe I should just stop writing about because the more I think about it the worse it gets. But now that I wrote that, I'm just going to think about it even more. I've got myself into a vicious cycle, isn't that pleasant?

No more of that! Revising has been a lot more enjoyable than I thought. At first, when I got two the finals of two poems, I was wondering what else I could do to them. But it came to me like it was the most obvious thing in the world (which I guess it kind of was). I could just turn them into short stories, since I already had one poem that was definitely done and had all of its drafts finished. The one I have done so far turned out rather well, but I'm still experimenting with the last one to make it work. Even once I think I'm done it seems like I have more to do.

Final Blog Week 14

This last week in class we talked about the significance of words. I think words are very, very powerful. However, I also believe many people have trouble finding words to describe feelings. In some cases, words that are said lack meaning, and that is when words are taken for granted. There is a cliche saying that "actions speak louder than words". I think this cliche is over used, however, when it comes down to it, it is true. So many times, people will say one thing, and then their actions contradict what they said.

During the first day of class we watched a youtube video with the blind man. He wrote on his sign blind please help, or something of that sort. Then a woman walked by and changed his sign to, "it is a beautiful day, and I can't see it". The way people reacted to the different wording of the same thing, blew my mind. Sometimes it takes a very powerful message to really understand the meaning of something. You can't watch that video and say, words aren't powerful, because they obviously are. To grasp this concept more, try imagining a world without language. In a world without language, there would be chaos.

Throughout the semester, the most challenging thing for me was writing flash fiction. I never seemed to be happy with the way I wrote a story. I thought, nobody cares about my story, it doesn't have some super deep meaning. I mostly used stories from my own life, or people I know to write. What I enjoyed most this semester was writing poems. I used to write poems when I was in middle school and I saved them in a box under my bed...I reread them in high school sometime, laughed and then threw them away, and I have not wrote any poetry since, until this class of course.

Final Blog Entry (#14)

This week we had a lesson on how to analyze the sounds and mouth movements when reading out loud a poem or short short and the relationship to the emotion in the piece. We had to choose a poem or short short to read out loud for the last day of class. We also had to submit our final revised copies of work for the literature journals.
The constant revisions of my work has taught me that no matter what, that work can still be done to further improve the overall quality of the paper. The feedback given by fellow classmates are crucial for knowing what areas to improve. I feel that is what helped the most since from that I can better analyze what areas they understood and how to make adjustments. I also learned the importance of word selection and how they convey diverse images in people's minds.
I enjoyed writing poems more than short shorts. Yet I remembered writing poems in the beginning of the semester that were basic and too abstract. It was a challenging transition to change from abstract to concrete. Now I find it hard to stop writing with concrete examples. Writing short shorts was challenge because I do not know what to write about or how to start a story. Once I did finally start, I had little to no idea as to how to end it. Figuring out how to end it was very time comsuming for me since I wanted to story to be at least entertaing to read and invoke some sort of feeling in the reader.

Last Blog :( Words and the Editing Process)

I cannot believe this is our last blog!

This week, we continued the editing process and talked a lot more about preparing pieces for the portfolio. Now that I have started editing my poems and have let go of my original ideas and words from my first drafts, I have been able to open up a lot more and be able to really edit my work. Because of this, I have created even better poems and words that are more complete and thought provoking.

I have known that there is significance in words, but that through the creative process new ideas and thoughts can be written and newer, more significant, more poem- worthy words can be created and used for your work. I have really begun to see this because of the editing process and I am glad that we are doing this because it is helping to remind me how important the editing process is to all forms of writing, not just poetry.

This semester, the most enjoyable piece that we had to collaborate was definitely the imitation of the other poets work. I really enjoyed doing this activity because it was almost like a model or guide I got to use to create my very own poem. The most challenging collaborative piece that we had to do was the beginning or I guess I should say the introduction of the short short fictions. I remember we had to choose a line from another poet's short short and build off of it. I found this activity extremely challenging because I just had no idea what to build off of from that one line and then create a whole fictional work. It was hard and I still think that shorts are the hardest to write even though they are fictional works. They just are more difficult to create in my mind. I think I am better at writing non-fictional work because I have an idea already in my head. I guess I am just more of a non-fictional poem writer!

Week 14 - Last week!

* What has the revision or journal editing process or preparing to present one of your pieces before the class revealed to you about creativity? or the creative process? or the significance of words?

* What thoughts / ideas / questions are sparked by this weeks reading / assignments? What are you working on/writing about? What have you enjoyed? What struggles have you faced with the work?

*Do you think creativity is necessary for the human spirit to thrive? What are some other forms of creativity you partake in besides writing for this class? How do (or don't) those creative endeavors influence your writing?

*We've created written, spoken, and collaborative pieces this semester? Which was the most enjoyable? The most challenging?

Week 13

This week in class there was time for us to discuss the final details for our literary journals, everything is slated out with that as long as we get all the final revisions back.  It went smoother than I thought it would have so that's a plus.  We also picked out a piece that we are to present on the 7th.  I chose a poem, this poem was then looked over for Wednesday with a fine tooth comb to determine syllable sounds, and overall tone of stanzas, etc.  I found that my work had a lot of back and forth between fast and slow so with certain lines leaning toward laborious to say.  I wouldn't have looked at it in that fashion if we hadn't discussed it on Monday.  We also did a free write based on photos presented in class.  I did a pretty detailed short story, I would have read it, but I was still finishing it when we moved to the next part of the in class assignment.  I think, given the amount of time, it is a decent work.  Now onto finishing the portfolio,  I only have three final revisions left and then just getting everything in order and writing the creative processes essay.  Hopefully my blogs will lend a helping hand! There have been a multitude of exercises and events that have occurred this semester to affect my style and creativity, the trick is getting these onto paper...