After reading Joan Didion’s ‘Why I Write’ I was inspired to step back and look at my own writing as a whole from an outsider’s point of view. I wanted to identify the small kinks and flickers of a developing style that I usually do not pay attention to.
Over the course of this semester, I have tried to mold my writing. I often find myself focusing too much on expressing emotion and finding words that sound right rather than paying needed attention to grammar and structure. After reflecting upon my work I have realized that there is more to writing than creating art and expressing deep thoughts and emotion. It can be just as powerful if not more to have writing that is simple and grammatically correct. Writing does not always have to put forth prolific ideas and abstracts about the world around us. That is what I feel I have struggled the most with this semester, the pressure to produce work that defies expectations and puts forth new thought and ideas, which has in turn taken away from my work. I think that I sometimes focus too much on what I’m saying rather than how I’m saying it. This class has taught me the tremendous power of ‘the author’s craft’. After reading the dynamic works of carefully picked authors for our talking notes, I have noticed the distinctive styles each writer possesses and how that propels their ideas forward. This has inspired me to develop my own voice as a writer and to refine my style of writing to work for me rather than against.
I often find myself romanticizing certain moments in time with my writing. I enjoy the use of metaphors and symbols, that push the reader to read between lines and deduce a meaning which is varied from person to person. I also like playing with time, either by writing in a flashback or by elongating specific moments in time. I think I do this because time has a sense of serenity to me and because writing is one of the only mediums that can truly control it. I do however feel that sometimes my work starts to loose direction along the way, I constantly try to decorate my work and build layers to my writing that sometimes it’s the base that falls short. This is what I have tried to change about my writing this semester, to step back and take an analytical voice and make clear precise deductions rather than poeticising moments and paying attention to the superficial layers of writing.