Part A: You, the Writer

• My writing identity prior to this course was just me writing little tidbits of ideas down and never doing things with them. I took this course last year as well and I promised to keep writing over the summer but I just forgot and never updated anything or added anything new to my blog until this semester. 
• My writing identity at the end of this course is much more confident than I was by this time last year. I feel much more mature and grounded in my writing style than I did before. It feels almost like I finally found a skin that fits me instead of the too loose style I had last year.

Development as a writer

• I feel that my genre of writing has stayed about the same, I still write a lot of horror since that is what I am most comfortable writing but I’ve recently found myself writing about softer things such as love, which is something I am not used to writing about.
• My ideas are still very dark but I seem to layer it with a fluffy, pastel aesthetic to cover up the darkness that really is concealed inside. I think it is more fun that way, creating a false sense of lightheartedness over top of the dark. 
• I consider myself a very detailed writer, I love including details to really make every situation as real as possible. Especially when it comes to horror writing, I find that the trick is in the details. If you really want to make people squirm in their seats, add as many vivid, gritty details as possible pertaining to the type of horror you want.
• I’ve been finding myself writing lots of poetry this year since a lot of my ideas come out in the style of poems already. Last year my thing was short stories but this year it seems to be poetry. I find that with my poetry, I use a lot of enjambment and I don’t really like to use a lot of punctuation (just a stylistic thing I guess) but I use capitals at the beginning of every line.
• My voice as a writer is similar to my voice as a person, just being more poetic. I like to say what’s on my mind without fear and share the feelings that I can’t express out loud.
• I feel my grammar is pretty good in my writing, but I think my main problem is using punctuation in my poems. I sometimes just don’t like the way it looks so I only add it when I absolutely need it. 

 

• Something very stylistic of me is my aggressive way of talking about things I am passionate about. I get really into it sometimes when I write and it becomes very defined how I feel about something in my style.
• Advice I would give to future creative writers is to always save things in your journal and maybe put some tabs on things you really like since you never know when it could be useful for a piece. Also to always write (cliche, I know but it seriously helps) because whenever I have an idea, I write it down because it might become something more than just an idea.
• I plan to actually keep my promise of updating my blog but even when I don’t, I want to keep writing and I actually have a few ideas of things I want to write over the summer.

Part B: You, the Blogger

• I have definitely become a better blogger than I was last year. I had a very difficult time keeping things updated and I just did not like to post my work. I have focused more on keeping the aesthetic of my blog consistent by picking featured images that fit the pastel look that I was going for.
• I feel that my blog looks way nicer than it did before but of course there is always room for improvement. I feel my colour scheme is much easier to look at with the soft shades and light outlines.
• I plan to keep updating this blog after school is finished because there are a few things that I want to write over the summer so I keep improving my writing skill.
• I would definitely continue to follow Paxton and Faith`s blogs as they inspire me a lot.
• I haven`t looked at too many professional blogs at the moment but I would love to find some blogs to read.

Part C: You, the Student

• An “Aha” moment from this semester is probably the writing we did for valentine’s day because I found my passion for writing about twisted versions or everyday things such as love and other things.
• I have become a much better reader than I was last year. I did have a bit of a decline in April because my schedule became really busy all of a sudden but it has gone back up since then. I plan on reading throughout the summer and getting all of the books on my list read before school starts. I think my favourite book of the semester has been The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde just because the eerie feeling was held throughout the entire novel and I just really enjoyed it. Reading improves writing because if you really enjoy a book, you may start to emulate and eventually develop a style of your own.
• I feel that I have accomplished quite a bit this year by keeping everything updated and posting things on time. I plan to write throughout the summer and to maybe post them onto my blog.
• I will take this course again for my final year because it is one of the best courses I have ever taken and it has helped me so much to find my voice and to improve my writing.
• My next steps to improve my writing is to write as often as possible since it is difficult to improve anything without practice.

Part D: You, the Fan

Writers Seminar (Shane Koyczan)

• I’m glad we did this writer since I had never really read any of his works before but I wish we could have done a writer that I was more acquainted with because it probably been a bit easier and it would take less time.
•  My favourite genre is horror but I loved learning about spoken word and I have been thinking about trying to write it myself. 
• I have learnt that the main thing to do in order to improve your writing is to always write and always read.

Here is my emulation of Remember How We Forgot by Shane Koyczan.

Remember how we forgot?

Remember how no one ever really died in the wars we fought?

Because life was just a game back then

And games were meant for children

And we were children

But now we’re not

We grew up so fast because we had to

We grew up because we were sold to the world

To clean up their mess

Since they didn’t have the guts to do it themselves

And now it is our problem

And we were adults when we were ten

I never got to play with Legos

Because my homework load already included projects of politics

Training me for a life I never wanted

Because I used to dream or working at Disneyland

Since it was the happiest place on Earth

And my childhood was already crumbling around me

As gowns turned into uniforms

And dreams turned into math equations

Remember how we forgot the magic beyond the logic.

• I plan to read more of Oscar Wilde and I think I’ll go back and re-read the Harry Potter series over the Summer.

 

Blogs I Enjoy

Paxton – http://sempiternallagoon.edublogs.org/

Paxton has a very unique voice and through her writing you can see a totally new side of her that not many get to experience in real life. I love her aesthetic of black and white images with the coloured background because it is simple but it means so much when you think about it plus the space theme is really nice.

Faith –  http://beeyoutiful.edublogs.org/

I love the marigold theme of Faith’s blog because it encaptures her style and personality very well. Her poetry is so beautiful and I am very inspired by it whenever I read it.

Claire – http://claireisinspace.edublogs.org/

I love her black and white galaxy theme since it is just very mysterious and dark. I really like the grim, indescribable style of writing because we both have a passion for the indescribable and strange so it is very fun to read. 

Other writers I’m a fan of is Stephen King, and J.K. Rowling.

Part E: You, the Critic of your Work

Piece #1

1.  The title of the first piece is That Boy and that title is significant because it remains vague about who the person is but it is kind of passive aggressive towards my feelings.
2.  So this piece is a poem about my feelings for a person that I met a while back and how it is super difficult for me to talk about my feelings.
3. I guess my purpose for this piece was just to get those emotions out there and I’ve been working on this poem for a while so it all just compiled together after a few weeks.
4. The person who this is written about inspired this piece and my past experiences with love.
5.  I started this piece off with just phrases that I had come up with and then I places them into a poetic format and I wanted to keep shorter stanzas so I combined certain phrases together to create a sort of story.

Example: 

I met a boy a while back;

A friend

No more than that.

But I started to feel a pressure in my chest the more I looked at him

 

Is it love?

Strong, with a heart of gold

I haven’t known him for too long, so why do I feel this way?

6.   I’ve gone back into the piece a few times to revise it and to fix my punctuation problem but I realized that writing about my personally experiences with love made me feel better about myself and my chances with other people.

7.  I personally really like this piece since it is about love but it is still passive aggressive, just like me so I think it captured my voice fairly well.

Piece #2

1. The title of this piece is Hellbound Sock Hop because I couldn’t think of anything else and I thought it was witty. It is significant because it pretty much describes what the monologue is about because the character died while going to a Sock Hop (which is just slang for a dance in the 50’s) and she goes to hell and I feel that the title just sounds like an old fashioned movie or something.
2. This piece is about seventeen year old girl  from 1955, who died rather brutally, coming back from the grave as a servant of the Devil and she is in charge of dragging a man to Hell so she is taunting him.
3.  The purpose of this piece was a project for my Drama class and I was allowed to use it for my fiction piece as well. i was going to write a different piece but after writing this monologue, I liked it so much that I decided to use it for both.
4. I’ve always been a huge fan of Retro styles so I knew I wanted to write something with a character from the 1950’s and it was partially inspired by Claire Pitman’s class act that she wrote titled In This Moonlight because it had this wonderful juxtaposition of the idealistic 50’s household and the sick reality of what would happen back then. People died horribly all of the time back then but often they were covered up.
5. This is written in the style of a monologue and I tried to write it in a retro type of voice. I originally wrote it to be in a southern accent but it wasn’t really working so I cut it.

Example: It was a Saturday night when it happened, and me and my best girlfriend Nancy Robinson were heading down to the sock hop on 44th street. After spending hours powdering our faces and making damn sure our hair wouldn’t go flat in the heat, we headed down the main road along with six others.

But then Nancy decided it would be better to walk down a different path with her, on our own.  Ten minutes of her constant worrying that the crowdedness would wreck the roll she had put in her bangs, I agreed. She was always a little dense, she didn’t really understand that the party was going to be even more busy and it was likely to deflate anyways. We went down the back road where hardly anyone walked when going to the dance hall, only traffic runs down there at that time of night. We were about to cross the street and Nancy stopped to retie her Oxford shoes and I didn’t notice.

     6. I went on several sites looking at the type of slang that would have been used back then and it was actually really entertaining to read up on. I looked at what types of cars came out in what years and what would actually happen to you if you were struck by a vehicle. I plan to go back in to revise and edit so it flows a little better and to even make it seem even more retro.

   7. I really liked writing this piece since I love writing about gore and placing it into the pristine time period that was the 1950’s was fantastic and I would love to actually get dressed up as the character and fully perform it. The cynical voice of the character is very fun to write because she is just this bitter corpse and I would love to explore the character further.