Taylor Carani

EN 219
Dr. Spyra
December 10, 2019
A Consideration of the Semester

Over the span of the past sixteen weeks or so, I have written a variety of stories ranging

from a single paragraph or page to nineteen pages. Each piece contributes to a different element

to my overall growth within this class. In my warmups done in the beginning of the year, I began

with more of a personal narrative/memoir style of writing. I typically am not fond of writing in

such a way because I find it boring to recount the events of my life, but as we have discussed

multiple times during workshops, the stories (if you can even call them that), could be interesting

to other readers. It was when we began our first workshop that I finally let my creative juices

flow and write what I am good at.

Writing creative non-fiction has taught me several things over the course of the semester:

1) I can do it; 2) it is not as bad as one who prefers fiction, might think; and 3) events don’t have

to be absolutely true. Without a doubt, I know that I definitely prefer fiction over non-fiction;

both when it comes to reading and writing. I will, however, say that I am glad I was exposed to a

new genre of writing because if I had not been pushed to do so, then I would have never tried it.

While writing non-fiction, I found that I grew not so much in the content that I wrote, but

more of in the format of the writing itself. High school English teachers brainwashed students

into thinking that everything must begin with a formal introduction and a conclusion that wraps

up all their hard work and that writing can never be fun. It was either research paper, persuasive

essay, or a narrative about yourself (done every single year). In this class I was finally allowed

to write creatively. One very specific thing I learned this semester was that I could use vignette
markers to distinguish time within a piece. Of course, I knew these existed, I just never knew that

I, myself, was allowed to use them.

Another thing I learned from this class is that I find myself writing more action and

dialogue, and less of my character's internal thoughts. I am much more of a show writer than a

tell. Also, since I have been able to incorporate detailed images within my writing, I’ve realized

just how important they can be to a piece and how it can get messages across much clearer.

Out of everything that I have learned throughout the year, I think the biggest thing that

struck me as surprising was that my readers were actually a fan of my work. I don’t mean to

sound full of myself when I say this, but I truly loved how our workshops were full of praise. I

think it made the process much more enjoyable than it was made out to be. For me, it boosted my

confidence as a writer. I never let anyone read my stories, only the structured, boring essays we

were forced to write in high school; so, allowing others to actually lay their eyes and

critique/give constructive criticism, was quite nerve wracking for me. Especially because I

thought no one would be interested in or understand the topics I wanted to include in my

writing.

As for my revisions, in the first story I wrote about the Fourth of July, one of the main

things people wanted me to include was a detailed scene of me and the frog I was going race, so

I did add that in between two paragraphs dealing with the frog race. Another thing that some

wanted cleared up was the specific location of where this all was taking place, I fixed that by

including the city on the first page. I also added the year of which the story took place in the title.

In my second story, the main issue my readers had was the question of the character’s age, for

this I simply introduced everyone’s age in within the first paragraph.