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

Reflective Journal 1

So, this blog has been turned into a reflective journal for my Creative Writing class.

Week 1 (technically Week 2)

This past week in class we discussed the issue of revision/spontaneity when it came to writing.  We also split up into our official groups and tossed around the ideas we had so far for our proposal.  My group really helped me begin to shape the short story I want to work on.  Their questions and suggestions have given me a lot to think about.  I feel confident that my group members will not be shy in offering constructive criticism rather than just saying that what I am writing is "good" and "flows well."  That has been my main issue with writing classes in the past: other students are too concerned about hurting your feelings rather than being honest.  But I do not think I will have that issue with my group.  There really is not much else for me to write about I suppose because we have not really gotten into the meat and potatoes of our proposals.  But once I start writing and receiving feedback from my group I am sure these blogs will get much lengthier.

All for now.

Liz