Intro into Creative Non-Fiction Reflection

In the hunt for good subject matter, the brainstorming sessions in class were very helpful. Writing a good paper seemed to not only have writing skill to thank for its exceptionalism, but also the subject the person chooses to write on, and the points they chose to focus. When I would go back through drafts of any of the essays, I would take comments very seriously, weighing each one on the final goal I had wanted for the work and its relevance. Comments on spelling and punctuation I would opt to include almost always, but comments on word choice changes I would either take or leave. For example the word jipped. Before this class I had never heard anyone fault another for using it, because it was “a racial slur.”  Words like that take on new meanings or lose their original one quite often in the English language, and unless I used it around other things appearing to be of the same racial bias, then an intelligent reader may take offense if needed.  However my use of it did not indicate that, and so I kept it regardless as to how one or two readers may feel about it. They should realize it's just a word to me if not put in obvious context, and so I choose to ignore them.

In my revision process I tended to steer more towards light-hearted topics because I feel we too often move toward darker ones, myself included. This was in part because a lot of people in our class did write so darkly, and even in the folio addition, to which I may or may not submit these essays. I enjoy making work in contrast to that of my peers. I also normally take a simplistic approach to the ideas I relay, with the overall showing complexity and a great deal of description.  An example is, “On the white side, in the top most window, above the pump house, a flag draped barely recognizable, full of tears and burns from years of summer sun, yet kept faint shades of red, white and blue crossed lines of stars, only visible when focused on.” This was not included in the earlier version, but since Professor Alva requested more detail of the house I was born in, this seemed a very telling detail of the meaning behind the memoir, by just simply describing one side of the house.

I took feedback at face value. Of course taking the person grading my work a tad more heavily...but none the less considering all who took the time to comment. Despite some classmates seeming to have more experience writing and reading, the observation of many “beginner” students had some of the most profound insights of all, and so I considered all equally.  For instance one suggested to speak more about my father in the memoir. I hadn’t even considered how much I had portrayed my father as a racist, uncaring man, which is only partially true. I added a small anecdote of him playing with us at the dinner table, which I feel added a nice layer to the work.

In the future I believe my own personal style of writing will continue to grow, and I feel I can add a lot of what I learned from Grammar and Style to the work I did in this class to improve them. I could use it to strengthen sentences or make them more concise. Some of the most influential pieces that others in my class wrote were, Elijah's “Profile of a Dying Mother” and “Looking for Work” by Gary Soto. What I saw in both pieces was that though I try to write simply with underlying complex ideas, I can improve. Shorter sentences can have far more power than I give them credit for.

         Intro into Creative Nonfiction opened my eyes to the possibilities I never knew about Non-Fiction styles of writing. I always believed nonfiction to be restrictive and limited, in what can be written, to only tell exactly what happened. In this class I learned there was much more you can do with this style, and can easily be incorporated with other classes. By using creative non-fiction one can add depth, when writing an assignment making it more enjoyable to write, but also to read. Choices of point of view, time in and out of scene, information that is explicit and information that is left to be question by the reader, can remake any written form more interesting, more enlightening and more memorable. I have noticed that my writing has not only improved throughout this course, in this class itself, but also in many of my other classes that require written assignments.