Writing: A History of Me

Hello, Blogosphere! I can't believe that it's already time to start my writing project. Once upon a time, this was all just an idea in the wee head of a Sophomore college student, scrambling to get an EDGE idea generated. For this first post, I'm going to quickly explain what my project is, what you can expect from the posts on this blog, and my personal history with creative writing.

One of the most vital things any writer (poetry, fiction, non-fiction, creative non-fiction, short stories, novellas, etc.) can have is a portfolio--the most important aspect of our job is just generating and generating material. Not to put my tongue in my cheek, but the most important part of being a writer is writing. Crazy, right? However, I think something that most beginning writers (myself included) overlook is that not everything you write will be perfect, not everything you write will even be usable. Just a few years ago, an unpublished poem and short story written by a teenaged Charlotte Brontë was discovered. Sylvia Plath had many unpublished works. And more than 20 poems by Pablo Neruda were just found in 2014. For all of the many, great poems and stories there are, there are millions upon millions of them that came before. So that's really just what I'm trying to create for myself with this project. A portfolio of poems and stories that very well may never see the light of day. Another thing I hope this project accomplishes is figuring out what my own writing process is. So, every week I'm going to be giving myself a writing assignment, the assignment can range anywhere from sonnets to a story about my childhood home to writing a short mystery story. From the assignment, I give myself a week to explore said project by generating 1 to 6 separate pieces that follows the assignment. Each Friday I will report on the assignment--what I learned, what worked, what didn't work, how I felt about it, etc.

Now that I've explained what I will be doing, I would like to give you guys a little peek into the journey so far. Unlike most people in my major, I didn't grow up reading or being read to. In fact, until about the 6th grade I was in remedial reading classes because I hated reading and English in general. How I ended up a creative writing major goes like this: one time in the sixth grade I went to a scholastic book fair. Do you guys remember those? During parent-teacher conferences? Even though no one in my family liked to read all the much, my mother always made us choose one book to read. That year I chose a book called Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City by Kristen Miller. I chose this book because ever since I was three years old, my favorite movie has been Kiki's Delivery Service and I've always liked the name Kiki. The moment I finished Kiki Strike I remember looking at the cover and thinking, "This is it. This is what I'm going to do." And ever since then, I've been writing. Sometime between 8th and 10th grade I began to waver on my decision to become a writer. I took a creative writing class in my 8th grade year and the way the class was set-up made me feel like writing wasn't for me and that I could never be very good at it. Luckily, however, I took another creative writing class in the 10th grade from the wonderful Miss Merrell, who made me fall in love with writing again and then some. So, here I am. A movie, a book, and many classes later and I know this is what I'm supposed to be doing.

So there you have it. Thanks for reading and please, come back next week where I will be reporting on epitaph poetry. The poetry of loss.

#writing #EDGE #reading #myjourney