Prior to taking this course, I had not written in a creative fashion since

elementary school. Throughout middle school, high school and my first two
years of college, all of my writing experiences included a prompt. Some
were more open ended than others, yet they all required a specific topic. For
the most part it felt as if there were a right or wrong answer in these essays.
Although I truly enjoyed working on some of these pieces, I never felt
emotionally attached to them. I simply wrote them to receive a good grade.
This course has given me the chance to break free from this mold and
develop an emotional attachment to my writing. Over the last ten weeks I
have improved and expanded upon my writing process, learned to apply my
writing skills in a meaningful way, received invaluable reviews and advice
from my peers as well as substantial self-revision and evaluation of my own
work.
Throughout high school, I learned to write in a linear fashion. This
process begins with a prompt and is followed by brainstorming period that
analyzes what direction the paper will take. After the brainstorming period is
complete, I develop an outline, which is then expanded into a rough draft.
The rough draft is then revised and polished into the final product. During
this process, any necessary research is completed and incorporated into the
work. My outlines tend to be brief as I spend enough time brainstorming that
I have a clear vision where my piece will go. These outlines are usually a few
words scrawled onto a piece of paper that capture the overall structure of
the work. This is my starting point that I can refer back to throughout the

process. After completing my first draft, I tend to find that it is very close to
the final product other than minor fixes. If there are any major issues with
the work such as a topic that needs to be further developed, I will go through
my writing process again for that given area. For example, if I were writing a
research essay and I skipped over a specific topic, I would analyze that topic,
form an outline and a draft to then incorporate it into the work as a whole
creating the final product.
There is nothing wrong with this process and I have used it to produce
many works that I am proud of and enjoyed writing. However, this limits the
scope of what a work can achieve. I have found it unnecessary to expound
upon my pieces that I have written while using this method simply because I
felt that each work had reached its full potential. For my first piece in this
class, a memoir about the life and death of my familys first dog, I used this
process. The resulting memoir captured the life of Madison and the impact
that she had on my family. Unlike my other essays, I had a strong emotional
tie this story. Although it was very difficult for me to write at times as it put
me back in a place that I did not want to revisit, I felt that I needed to expand
outside of this linear process in order to continue to growth of the story.
Despite the difficulties that I faced when writing this story, I received
positive feedback during the first review session. My peers felt that I had a
touching story written in an interesting style (flashbacks and vignettes).
However, they also felt that there could be a lot more to add to the work. It
could go beyond the story of my familys first dog. The most valuable piece

of advice that I received was to write a second memoir separate from the
original. Although these two pieces were separate, the end goal would be to
shuffle them together like a deck of cards to use my story about Madison to
drive a second plot. Keeping this advice in mind, I began the revision process
to develop my original draft into what eventually became my final paper.
After completing the parallel storyline, I was forced to alter my writing
process. My normal linear fashion of writing would not help me weave the
two stories into a cohesive piece. This is when I saw my writing process
evolve. Rather than stop at a final polished draft, my first draft morphed into
subset of a larger story, the story of my relationship with my brother.
Madisons story expanded into a vehicle for developing my relationship with
James. After the initial weaving of these two narratives, I had my midterm
paper.
At first, I was satisfied with the end result of my midterm paper. I felt
that I had sufficiently told the story of the development of my relationship
with James. However, after an extensive round of peer reviews, it became
clear that my storyline was lopsided towards my childhood rather than my
time in college where James and I really became close. In order to revise my
midterm paper to match the desired storyline, I had to continue the process
of carving a new narrative arc out of an existing story. To accomplish this, I
brainstormed a list of memories that could potentially add to the weaker
areas in my paper. After drafting these stories, I inserted them into the
existing midterm paper. Although the real storyline began to form, some

things were out of place or didnt contribute towards the end goal. These
final revisions proved to be much more difficult than adding the new
vignettes to the story. Everything had to fit just right while also moving the
plot forward in a meaningful way. Keeping the advice of my classmates in
mind, I began to add the final touches of removing the unnecessary aspects
of the story while replacing them with stronger snapshots from my life.
Additionally, I had to ensure that I wrote in a way that my audience
could understand and follow. Since I wrote from my memories and about
events that I lived through, I found that I left out certain details that hindered
what I saw as a clear story line. My personal insights led me to believe that
everything flowed together. The peer review process helped find these
deficiencies in my work and create an arc that the reader can easily follow.
The last revision I felt that I had to make was to add a new ending. My
midterm paper ended with James and me sitting hungover in Kane Hall, a
comical yet unsatisfying ending. It didnt tie the two storylines together as it
made no mention of Madison or the other powerful aspects of the story. In
the end, I felt that closing with my parents toast of James at his graduation
dinner would be a powerful and emotional way to bring everything together.
Additionally, I was able to adapt the quotations from the actual toasts that
my parents gave during that dinner. In comparison to the rest of my paper
which is based solely on my memories or stories from my parents, I found it
very satisfying to adapt from the actual speeches.

Overall, this course has given me the opportunity to write something

other than a research paper. It has been an outlet for me to put some very
difficult moments in my life onto paper and thus providing some sense of
closure and reflection. While writing in this fashion, I feel that I have vastly
improved my abilities as a writer, reader and reviser. Even though this style
of writing does not directly apply with my finance major, it is a skill that I will
carry with me for the rest of my life.