Creative Writing Final Reflection

1.)  We did a lot of different writing pieces this semester. Including posts to our blogs. Some of which have been things we were asked to write in our journals, like our window poem. A poem where you picture a widow in your head and you imagine that you are looking through it and you look left and right and describe what you see in a short and sweet kind of way. And we originally wrote a couple of them in our journal and then posted one on our blog. We did that with a bunch of our posts. Although not all of them were like that. We were given a topic of what to post and weather we put it in our journal or not was up to us. We did that with our scary story. Sometimes we were asked to go on to our classmates’ blogs and read some of their writings and leave positive comments, and maybe some advice on how they could have written something differently. It was nice reading others comments and seeing what they had to say about my writing. We also had some creative pieces. Like this one time when we were using color as inspiration, we got these paint chips and had to write a haiku using the names of the colors. That was really fun. We also got one of those paint chip strips with seven different shades of the same general color and had to write a poem using the names of the colors.

That one was also fun. We had these journals that we had to write in and we had them checked to make sure we had a certain number of full pages. A majority of the pages came from our different writing activities but not all of them which gave us the opportunity to write whatever we wanted outside of class, which helps inspire creativity.

2.)    I don’t read much out of class and didn’t read too much in class. But it was nice to read the work of my classmates and to see the different writing styles. Like the lists of 101 things that they wrote about themselves. It is really neat to be able read little things about them that they were willing to share.

3.)    At first I was kind of scared about setting up a blog. I didn’t really know how it worked and didn’t really know where to go with it. But getting this far and having as many posts as I do has been a really cool experience. I feel like it is a cool and easy way to share my writings with my family and they love it. I think I have gotten a little bit more confidence about my writing abilities after seeing the wonderful comments from fellow classmates and my teacher. I came up with the name for my blog because I love my name and I love things that have my name in them so “quoth the RAVEN nevermore” (and my name being Raven) came to mind and I just loved it. I also like how it’s the title of this poem by Edgar Allen Poe and his stuff tends to be a little bit on the dark side, and I think that it’s a little ironic that I like it because I feel like I’m this sweet little thing, all sunshine and rainbows over here and then there is my like of Edgar Allen Poe. I know that others in my class have read it and my teacher, as well as my mom, and my aunt. I’m not sure if anybody else has read it. I think it would be cool to have somebody from another country like London, read it, and comment on it.  I think it would be cool to get an opinion from someone from far away. I haven’t decided if I want to continue to use my blog. I think it would be cool if I did, I think I might get busy and forget about it but it would be cool. I would probably post more short stories and more poems. I might use it as a way of journaling, but I’m not sure.

4.)    Journaling was sometimes hard for me, especially if I had to come up with stuff to write to fill the pages. But at other times it was kind of surprising how quickly I filled up pages, and how it was fun to do so. The type of stuff that is in my journal… hmm… I feel like it is mostly things that I was asked to put in there, like the different writing activities we had. Like a couple of times when we had this weird little line and then we had to finish the picture and then write a short story about it. But some of what is in my journal I came up with on my own. Like a poem I came up with after getting a list of big events that have happened in my lifetime. I don’t know if I would want anyone to read my journal. Most of the things in my journal that I would be ok with others reading are already on my blog for everyone to see. And my journal is kind of like the spot where I tried out different stories and stuff and they aren’t very well written and I don’t really want others reading it.  I don’t think I will continue my journal. If I did it would continue to just be a place to try stories and see how they are on paper.

5.)      An entry from my journal:

    

In the world around me,

I see,

I see the girl next to me with phone in hand,

I see the notebook that I’m writing in.

I see the pen in my hand.

I see my phone resting on my backpack on the table.

I see another girl, not sure what she’s doing

With her back turned towards me.

In the world around me,

I see,

Love,

Hate,

Racism,

Judgment,

Sexism,

Criticism,

I see,

Pride,

I see,

Fancy houses fancy car.

And very occasionally,

I see,

The humble.

For some like me it is hard to see these kind of things.

I see them and I wonder why, why there has to be such a harsh difference, why can’t there be more love and equality?

Why does someone always have to outdo the other?

I see,

Things I don’t want to see,

Like war,

And heartache.

Every now and then I see,

Love,

Peace,

Inclusion,

Why can’t it always be like that? That is what I will never understand.

6.)    A passage I find notable from my blog would be the following:

A Link in Time

As I dug, my small hand shovel hit something hard.  I thought it was just a rock, as it is very rocky out here. I decided to just dig around it, but I kept hitting whatever it was.  I finally decided to try to uncover it and see what it was so I could try to move it. As I brushed away the dirt on top, what I thought was a rock was actually, much to my surprise, a wooden box.  As I tried to uncover it more and retrieve this newly found treasure I thought about how it got here and why it was here.  Why was it a few feet from the big tall tree that I loved to escape to? Why was it out here a few acres from the farm house we moved into a few years ago? What could be inside? Did the person who buried it want it to be found?

As I tried to unbury and gather up the box I thought about the history of this area. I thought about how soldiers, young men from small families, lived in this area. One had even lived in my house back then. I wondered if he was the one who buried the box.

I finally got a hold of the box. I flipped the lid open to see what was inside. There was an old lock, heavy and a little dirty. There was also two interlocking chain links. One of the last two things was a small, pressed, white flower. And lastly a note written in almost perfect cursive. Written to a young man from the girl he loved.

The note talked about how she told him to look for this box, buried a few feet from the tree they would always meet at, when he got home from the war. It also talked about how the small, pressed flower represented the small, white flowers he would always give her when they met by the tree. The lock, that she had randomly found, represented that he had the key to her heart. And at last the two chain links represented that they would always be connected especially in heart.

I thought about what I had just seen and read. I thought about it seemed like he never came back, never looked for the box. This was the part of me that knew the reality that not very man made it back. But the romantic side of me thought that he did make it back and was fine and was so in love with her and happy to be back that he went straight to her forgetting about the box.  I decided to go with the latter idea. I also decided to rebury the box. Knowing that by now they would both have been dead for many years.  I reburied it so just in case their spirits wanted to visit it they could.

7.)    I don’t really plan on doing much creative writing in the future. If I do it would be short stories, or poetry. Which is pretty much the same kind of stuff I write now.

8.)    All of my classmates have been so great to work with this semester, and so has our wonderful teacher. Thanks to those who left the nice comments on my blog. You are all talented and gifted writers. Don’t give up on writing if it is what you love. Same for any other goals, don’t give up, don’t let others get you down, you can do whatever you want even if your circumstances don’t seem very favorable.