here lies the coursework of the Sweetland minor in writing gateway. 

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the over arching assignment: students were assigned to find a past written piece and expand on it, reimagining the original piece into new genre works.

 

my original piece was a poem (found in the final zine) titled “the Perspective of a Bedroom rose.”  this is a poem I wrote in the recent past. it is told from the perspective of a wilted flower in a bedroom, observing life outside, and reflecting on their state of being inside. i wrote this sometime this past summer (2018), and it was easy to write, because i wrote about how i felt: bored, and wasting away––only in the poem, it is told by the flower. i initially wrote this poem in my personal journal, with no intended audience. however, as you read the last sentence, “do you now get my spoiled aura,” i guess i was rhetorically reaching out to the friends who asked me how my summer was going. it was difficult for me to simply say, “i’ve been bored.” fed up, after several friends asked me, i wrote this poem.

 

and i have expanded it… from childhood vignette to an academic blog post to mock-up zine.

(see "view experiments" for blurbs and excerpts)

 

in the end, i feel like i’ve found my voice--expanding on the prose is something i am realizing i seem to enjoy. up until this course, i have been insecure, almost ashamed, of sharing my writing. perhaps it was the content i always immersed myself in. looking back now, it baffles me how i have never done any creative writing. ever. i would only bury myself in the comfort of academic essays--research, research, and more research. to me, i could research and write, without ever exposing what i actually thought or felt. i guess this was why i was so insecure. i realize that my minimal exposure to creative writing, and vast, endless writing of only academic essays has taken a toll--i seem to have lost my voice amidst reiterating research, regurgitation of facts to support an idea etc. sometimes i would read past essays and not recognize that it was my own writing. but this course, the creative route i chose to take in my experiments and project, has allowed me to find my own voice. i now recognize my thoughts and can almost hear me reading aloud. currently, i feel as if i am blossoming out of the fear of not being able to write. writing is fun. and i am most proud of my newly discovered love and confidence in writing.  

 

enough blabber. read away...