I love writing. I maintain a blog, YouTube channel, and am the editor for a podcast, so I spend a lot of my time writing for these platforms and then sharing what I write. It’s important to me to become an effective writer and communicator so that I can present my ideas to others in a way that is convincing. I have a topic that is important to me, and I need to be able to write clearly and convincingly. It is also important to be able to connect the importance of what I am writing about with what others before me have communicated regarding the topic. The more effective communicator I can be, the more effective I can be in spreading awareness about the topics that I talk about. Since writing is such an important method of spreading information, I have been diligent about taking to heart what I learn in my classes on how to be a better writer and communicator. I will demonstrate my growth and skills as a writer and communicator in three separate pieces: A narrative essay I wrote about my childhood dog as a college freshman; a similar piece I wrote for an advanced creative writing class where I mused over an important life lesson by telling a story; and a final poetics essay that details the process I use when writing.
The first piece I display here is a narrative essay I wrote about my childhood dog when I was a college freshman. Writing has always been a huge part of my life. My peers at public school would spend their free time playing video games or sports or some other childhood activity; I spent my time writing endless stories. What they lacked in depth they made up for in quantity. But during my time in school I was able to hone my ability to not just weave a narrative, but to also impart some important lessons. The thrust of this paper was to describe the importance of cherishing the important things in life, because you don’t know the true value of something until it’s gone. I did this by weaving stories of my beloved pet with musings about how children do not fully appreciate the importance of certain things.
I actually decided to revisit this concept of imparting a lesson via narrative when I took an advanced creative writing class winter quarter of 2020. I have been working on writing a memoir of my experiences in a religious cult and sharing stories without any sort of lesson to learn or giving them weight always feels hollow and it’s a skill I am working on crafting. When I took BIS 300 Autumn quarter of 2019, one of the things I learned from the writing that we dissected was that stories don’t stand on their own merit. You have to weave theory into it. You have to include some overarching lesson, some grand takeaway for your audience. The narrative serves to drive home that point. That was what I was working on with the piece about the final conversation I had with my parents before they started shunning me. What can happen in life to create a divide between parent and child? What can you learn from confrontation? How can you come away stronger? Those were the questions I answered in this piece.
The final piece I display here is my final poetics essay, the defining piece of my advanced creative writing class, was to take a hard look at myself and my writing process and convey it to an audience. Why do I write? Where do my stories come from? My mind can conjure up the “facts” of a story from now until the cows come home. But what’s the meaning? What’s the depth? It’s as if there’s this locked box in my heart, these emotions I have kept at bay for so long that need to come barreling out. It isn’t enough to convey information; there has to be depth.
In conclusion, I feel that these three papers give a very detailed map of my growth as a writer and a communicator. Telling stories has been an important part of my life for as long as I can remember. But learning to use those stories in a manner that contributes to the spread of knowledge, that touches the lives of others, that imparts a practical lesson is something I am still learning to do. I began my college career writing about my childhood dog, not really having a specific direction with that piece but having a lesson I wanted to impart. I later learned how to mix story with theory to write a piece that will move people to action or impart a powerful lesson. Finally, I was forced to take a hard look at why I write in the first place, and decide once and for all what is important about it to me. IAS has given me the opportunity to grow my biggest passion in life, and for that I will forever be grateful.