Farewell (for now)

As the semester comes to an end I'd like to recap all that we have read or written about. A personal favorite of mine was reading "Writing Down the Bones" as a whole, closely followed by maps to anywhere.

Writing down the bones I connected to on a personal level, she pushes her readers to push themselves and to create better work by first starting with shitty work, and that's okay. One point that she stresses that I found both inspiring and hilarious is to keep ALL of your journals filled with brief ideas, scribbles, etc. I found this to be so funny because it is something I do already, I have notebooks filled with things from the beginning of my freshman year of high school, during the phase of my first real boyfriend and teen angst. Over the summer going into my freshman year of college here at EMU a close friend tried to convince me to get rid of them arguing "You haven't opened them in 3 years, what's the point of keeping them? They're only taking up space."  But, I held on, I kept them stored in a box in my closet.  As it turns out over Christmas I went back and opened them, a bittersweet moment but worth it.

She also stresses that it's okay to not be wonderful and that every writer starts somewhere, they may believe they are the Picasso of poetry (chances are they aren't) but might as well let them start there. Personally over the semester I have made great strides towards improving my own works. I have fought through personal problems only to come out stronger and more developed. I feel as though I have found my voice, and what I want to do with it. My poetry has come a long way from the beginning of the semester, as has my ability to write fiction. To be honest before a class my freshman year, and this one I was absolutely awful at writing fiction. Yet, through work-shopping and working with other young writers I have progressed.

From Maps to anywhere I not only found a personal connection, but I found a love of his writing style.  He varies from a very reflective, in the moment style of writing to a disconnected fragile style. The range alone I found to be impressive, as I often get stuck in one style while writing. He incorporates such detail in the ordinary experiences he has, it inspired me in a sense to go out and look at things differently. How would I describe everything going on to someone who couldn't see? How do I tell my readers how I was feeling without being boring and plain? By expanding my means of doing so, and opening my heart/mind to everything around me. Often times people shut out everything that doesn't directly pertain to them, The "noise" gets drowned out by our internal noise or even other external noise that we blare in order to ignore the world and it's potential.

As a whole this semester these two novels or collections of stories have had the most influence on me as a reader, and a writer, Changes to my style based on theirs have been made, but without managing to lose my own style only to mimic theirs. Several poems, or short stories spoke to me as well but none of them carried the same impact as these two collections. In a way I am proud of myself for actually reading through them instead of skimming through them online only to find I got absolutely nothing out of doing so. It has been a good semester, and I bid you  farewell (temporarily).