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The Sunrise - What I Knew and Where I Started 

        Creative writing is what I went into the minor hoping to further develop.  I began my repurposing project with a pretty daunting goal – trying to turn an academic paper into a fictional short story.  The first work, "The Last Resort," is that story.  The most difficult part was attempting to retain the message and exigency of the paper while writing a fictional tale.  I hope and think I pulled it off.  The other works on this page are essentially my complete history with creative writing. From the first story I wrote in 9th grade, to the 30,000-word beginning of a novel, I don’t have too much experience, but enough to know it’s something I enjoy and something I’m good at.  The process of developing and creating characters and plot is one that thrills and excites me – complete control over my fictional world. Though I’m still learning, creative writing is a passion of mine ane one I hope to further explore in the future.  

 

As I writer I think you sometimes have a good sense of when you kind of “have it”.  I knew after my first draft that I had a decent start, but it didn't come together like I wanted it to.  After some peer review, they suggested I expand the final part as much as I could, bringing forth the ethical debate fully.  After some brainstorming, we decided the best way to do this might be to give some inner-conflict to each of the characters rather than a simple pro vs. con situation.  I’m very glad I decided to go this route, as I think it brings a lot to the story.  After my second draft, I sort of knew I “had it”.  I read it over and was actually pretty happy with it.  I of course made small edits and such for the final draft, but I didn't want to edit just for the sake of editing if that makes sense.  In the end, I’m actually really happy with how this turned out.  I was nervous at first to how I was going to be able to do this, but now I’m very glad that I did.  It was extremely challenging, time-consuming, and at times frustrating; but also fun and without a doubt worth every struggle.

           WRITING 220

         

   "THE LAST RESORT"

                    2009

         

"THE STRANGE STORY OF DR. HECKEL AND MR. JYDE"

It was my freshman year of high school and my English teacher, Ms. Solomon, assigned us to create a parody.  Having just read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I thought the absurdity of the story suited itself perfectly to a parody.  What I produced was a 2,000 word short story entitled, The Strange Story of Dr. Heckel and Mr. Jyde, narrating the tale of a scientist who transformed into another person to escape his daily life, only to find out his wife was unfaithful to him, by having her cheat on him with his alternate personality.  Only later did I find out I had taken the assignment far more seriously than my classmates, who mostly wrote single paragraphs detailing the possible idea for a parody.  In the end I don’t think anyone ever actually read that story besides my mother (who I can proudly say loved it).  However, it was through writing that short story that I discovered something about myself – I can write; but also even more than that – I could create. 

                     2013

         

   "A PERILOUS GAME"

For my final assignment of the previous semester’s course, I had written the initial 3,000 words of a thriller novel,  in the process re-discovering my passion for creating characters, settings, and plot after a legnthy hiatus.  My goal for this new class was to continue and complete roughly half of the project.  And, 30,000 words later, I accomplished my goal - telling the story of a cocky CIA agent trying to chase down a wanted terrorist loose in Washington D.C.  Sitting down to write became the highlights of my week; I went to bed at night thinking of new plot lines and jolted out to write down any new ideas.  Although I have not had time to finish the novel, it nonetheless sits there in the confines of my computer, waiting one day to be finished. As a disclaimer, some of this remains unedited, so please excuse some typos.  And - viewer discretion is advised.

                     2014

         

     "THE GOLFER"

The night before my Communications midterm I had a lot of studdying left to be done.  The stress of the situation starting to engulf me, an idea suddenly came into my head – the idea of a story.  I opened up a new document and started to write.  Two hours and 3,000 words later I had written the first chapter of an exciting new project about a young golfer struggling to find confidence and love in the midst of the biggest tournament of his life. Though this admittedly may not have been the most productive form of exam preparation, it serves as an example of why I love to write.  I also very much hope to expand this project in the future.  A problem I ran into with "A Perilous Game" was not being knowlegable enough about the subject to do the subject justice.  That's not a problem with this one. Again, this is only the first chapter, but if you like golf I'd give it a quick read.

          WRITING 220

         

     "WHY I WRITE"

This is the first thing I wrote for the Writing Minor and a happy story of how I came to love writing.  It was a very thought-provoking project, as I'd never been asked before to truly examine myself as a writer.  Though it was proposed to be - when I thought about it I didn't feel the need to any sort of real conflict.  After some grammatical revisions and adding to the second paragraph about the feeling of control, I ended up with something pretty similar to my first draft (which was more like my third draft actually).  It’s interesting – sometimes with rough drafts I feel like I have to change everything and sometimes I don’t feel the need to make many thematic edits.  This turned out to be the latter.  This essay was more from the heart, an honest exploration of my self-discovery as a writer.  It was stimulating and even fun to write, yet another step in my writing path.

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