Weeks 9-10

Well, once again, I forgot to post a reflective journal last week.  10 Fail Points for me.  Anyway, it's the end of the semester and things are getting hectic.  I've been working a lot on finishing my short story and at this point I'm like 95% done.  I think this week's workshop will really help me decide what needs to be added or cut from the story to reach that 100%.  I'm pretty nervous about presenting my story in a few weeks; mainly because of the question portion that comes after everyone has presented.  I'm probably going to stumble all over myself, oh well.  To get back on track with my story: I've been trying really hard to develop Jinny into a stronger character.  I've turned this story into a sort of "finding yourself" story where Jinny is the person trying to find herself and trying to become a stronger person.  She really sticks up for herself in a couple of scenes and I'm quite proud of her.  I still feel like I need to add one more scene in this story to give a better insight into both Jinny and Camille; it'd be dedicated to talking about their past and answering some questions people had during my last workshop.  I just have to find the right place to put it right now. 

All for now,
Liz

Week 7/8

Well, not a whole lot has really been going on.  I haven't really touched my short story lately because of everything else that I need to work on in order to graduation.  Frustration. Definitely.  Class has been going the same as usual.  Except I wish people would submit what they want workshopped for class a few days in advance like they're supposed to.  I like to do all my homework during the day and have the night to just unwind from classes and school work but when people neglect to e-mail us their stuff until the night before class it's pretty obnoxious.  Ok, I'll stop ranting.

I'm still working on developing Jinny for my story.  I think she's going to be an antiques dealer/appraiser.  And I want the audience to be able to pick up on the fact that she is emotionally unstable (because of the divorce) and she's confused by her feelings for Camille and isn't sure on how to act on them.  She isn't sure if she's gay, bisexual, or just emotionally confused over the divorce.  I really want my story to span the entire time Camille is pregnant and also a month or so after she gives birth.  I planned on having Camille move in with Jinny but I don't know if that would be considered too rushed because the page maximum has been changed to 20 pages where at the beginning of the semester the story had to have a 20 page minimum.  So I just don't know right now.


That's really all I have going on for now,
Liz

Week 6/7

Egad, I just realized I hadn't written an entry for last week!  I was busy with preparing for midterms that it completely slipped my minds!  Whoops!  Anyway, not much went on last week, we only had class on Tuesday and we just workshopped.  As far as my story is headed right now I have multiple scenes written up and I'm reaching that point where I have to decide what to keep and what to pitch.  The ending is still in a fog; I have an idea but I'm not sure if I want to go through with it.  I guess we'll see.  I'm working on my character development since that seems to be probably my weakest category.  This new 20 page maximum has put a real damper on my story; I have had to reevaluate my characters and plot and it's been a real struggle. But I think I might be making some progress.

THIS week we workshopped as usual in class and unfortunately my story has been on the back burner due to my midterms.  This doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about my story.  I think about it all the time: I'll have constant conversations in my head between my characters.  Or I will think of possible scenes and the like.  This makes it difficult for me to concentrate in some of my classes because I'll doze off, thinking about my story, and forget what's going on in class, ha ha!

Well, that's about all for now!
Liz

Week 5

For this post I'm going to skip recapping what happened this week.  What I really want to talk about is a certain critical response I received for the rough draft of my short story today.  While I'm not one to whine or pout when someone doesn't like something I have written, and I am very open to advice for my work, the person who wrote this response was down right rude.  And it was completely unnecessary.  I was talked down to, insulted, and treated like I was ignorant and did not know how to write.  I did not sign up for this class to be belittled.  Quite frankly, I have never been so insulted by someone's "response" to a piece of my work ever.  And I've dealt with tough critics and blatantly honest people going on four years.  I will be showing up sometime next week at my professor's office to discuss this further.  I understand that he want us to be honest when we are critiquing and workshopping and I am totally fine with that, I prefer honesty; but this was taken way too far.  I am extremely disappointed with this person.  I know that in the grand scheme that this is just one person out of twenty-some odd other classmates; but this needs to be brought to the professor's attention. I am not going to let this kind of "critiquing" continue; this is not the kind of "honesty" that the professor was talking about. This was just rude and mean. 

On a more positive note, I enjoyed the time I had for my workshopping.  The majority of classmates gave me some great ideas and good advice.  They brought up aspects that I would have never thought about because I only have an author's perspective and their reader perspective has really come in handy.

All for now,
Liz

Week 4

Well, this week we didn't have class on Tuesday.  On Thursday we workshopped Lily's poems.  I'm really having issues with printing off annotated poems and a two page critique.  I really can't afford to use all that paper.  I would really appreciate it if we could do either one or the other.  I have other classes that require me to print off a good deal of paper and I cannot afford it.  I think this needs to be discussed in class and soon.  If anything I do not see the issue with simply emailing our two page critique to the writers that week.  It makes more sense and saves paper and money. 

I've been working a bit on my project and I have to workshop it this Thursday.  It's going to be a very scattered draft but I'm hoping for some good critiques that'll help me pull it altogether.

All for now,
Liz 

Week 3

Well, this week was pretty short-lived.  We only had class on Thursday due to the snow.  The break was nice, of course. :)  Anyway, on Thursday, we work shopped Claire, Kyle, and Brad's poems.  When I was annotating and typing up my 2 pg. critical analysis or what have you, I found myself repeating almost everything I had written down on the copy of the poems.  So I am not sure how useful having both the annotations and the critical analysis will be for the poets.  I understand why our professor wants us to do both, but sometimes I feel like it might be a waste of time and especially paper.  Maybe it will get better as we work shop more people.  From my understand we do not have class on Tuesday (February 8th) so I guess we're just work shopping Lily's poems on Thursday?  The class will be work shopping MY first draft for my story on Feb. 17th.  I am kind of dreading it because I have not started it (I know I know, I'm being a slacker).  I have a bunch of scenes and dialogue in my head and now I just have to knuckle down and get to the actual process of putting it down on paper.  This scares me because I'm worried it won't be like what I have in my head.  And I'm ranting.  Whoops.  Well, that's all for now!

Liz

Reflective Journal 2

Week 2

On Tuesday the whole class went in a circle and talked about their project for the semester.  We discussed issues we were having with our project.  Then after that we got into our small groups and pretty much did the same thing except we went into greater detail.  My group members are always full of ideas or suggestions to happily lend when I find myself stuck with my project.  And that's all we really did on Tuesday.

Thursday's class was all about poetry.  Everyone brought in a poem they had written and we went around the room and read our poems aloud.  Then we had the person sitting next to us edit our poem.  Lauren was very thorough with her editing and suggestions and has given me a lot to work with if I ever wish to re-polish my poem.  We also talked about poetry in general and what we thought the definition of poetry was.

On a side note, I am a little concerned with the way we are supposed to workshop for class this week.  I feel like having to turn in a two page critical paper and also annotate the poems for each person is really repetitive and I do not see the point in it.  I think the way we workshop should be put up for discussion in class this week to see if anyone else has these same concerns.

All for now,
Liz