nicholas clark- writer's mind final portfolio fall 2014
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Nicholas R. Clark
The Writer’s Mind- Writing Intensive
Professor Katie Budris
December 5th, 2014
Final Portfolio Revisions
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Nicholas Clark
12/09/2014
Prof. Budris
Self Reflection Final Portfolio
Introduction:
At the beginning of the Fall semester I walked into the Writer’s Mind course having
absolutely no idea what a writing intensive course was, and because it was also my first
writing art’s course I had even more reservations about the content I would be required
to produce throughout the semester. Within just a few short weeks, however, the step-
by-step processes given to us for each assignment proved to not only expand my
creativity, but also inspire me to become a more calculated writer, while paying attention
to details in all of the right areas. While the dynamic of my writing style itself was
challenged multiple times throughout the semester, my fear of letting others read my
work was challenged even more significantly. This course has shown me the importance
of looking at writing as more of a process and less of a job, and by asking myself “why”
before attempting to write anything, I am now more adapt at tackling different styles of
writing I previously would have avoided.
Calibration Assignment:
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! While this assignment seemed easy at first, it actually proved to be a little more
difficult than I had originally anticipated it to be. I had never previously sat down to think
about the exact steps taken when I am attempting to write a new piece, but by doing so
I have since been able to focus in on specific patterns I follow when attempting to create
a new piece of literature. I also really enjoyed using the ‘Wordle’ image creator,
because it allowed me to see how an over usage of some words throughout one piece
can help point out negative patterns in other pieces I have written that are of a similar
subject matter. If a writer overuses particular words too much, readers tend to become
bored of the subject matter, so by pointing out these words and knowing which words to
look for I have become more aware of the necessity of using more colorful vocabulary to
keep my readers entertained.
Shadow Poem Assignment:
! The shadow poem assignment was probably my favorite one of the semester,
mainly because it challenged our entire class to discuss issues from our pasts we
otherwise wouldn’t have publicized. Initially I was afraid of including too much gruesome
detail about the specific incidences I discussed in my poem, but after hearing a few of
my classmates poems I became much less fearful for the reactions of my classmates. I
was actually very surprised at how mature everyone reacted to some of the somewhat
shocking subject matter that was written about for the assignment, and never once did I
feel like anyone had disrespected anyone else which was very comforting.
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! I think the hardest part about revising my poem was trying to transition out of the
rhyme scheme I had become dependent on to try to give the poem an overall more
serious tone. While I do enjoy poetry, I generally use rhyme as a sort of safety net, but
had never previously realized how often times it can skew the overall message from my
poem to the reader and take away from it’s overall importance. For this particular
assignment the topic of infidelity and abuse were very prominent themes, and by
sticking solely to an ABAB rhyme scheme, the poem became much more ‘sing-songy’
than I had originally wanted it to. Although I wasn’t too satisfied with my final revised
version, I can definitely agree that it had a more serious feel to it than the piece I
originally handed in.
Memento Narrative:
! The idea of taking two seemingly unrelated incidences in my life and attempting
to make a connection between them was something I had never thought to do prior to
the memento narrative assignment. By conducting interviews with different people in my
life and asking them to list traits they associate with me, I was able to successfully
narrow down the list of potential events I could use to relate two incidences to a
seemingly related personality trait. For me, the brutal honesty that I used in the piece
was somewhat difficult to muster up the courage to write about- especially because the
first of my two stories was an event that happened to my mother more so than it did
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myself. I think because I was able to take a life changing incident that happened to her
when I was younger and compare it to a similar, although very different, incident that
occurred to me at a much older age, I was able to show the readers how I have grown
as a person while still holding true to my core life values.
! The end results of the two seemingly unrelated stories were very different, but
the ending of the first one sort of acted as a answer key to the second one. Had the first
incident never happened to me at such a young age, I may have made a different
decision in the second story, which was a very hard fact to come to terms with as the
writer of these pieces. I think the transitioning between the two pieces was the most
difficult aspect of this assignment, in other words figuring out where to end story one
and pick up story two at. If given this assignment again I would attempt to use two
different incidences in my life and intertwine the two stories in an alternating manner
throughout the entire paper. I think the back and forth transitions may be a little more
confusing for the reader, but overall it creates a more memorable impact as well.
Final Project: Parody (Final Edit)
The Sun Can Wait.
I remember the brisk autumn air relentlessly blowing against my frail seven year-old
back, and just how free I felt as I was sat perched high above every monotonous thing on the
ground below. I knew that in that particular moment in time, I was on top of the world, and that I
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would remain untouchable as long as my feet grazed the surfaces on even the highest clouds in
the autumnal sky. I had concluded that my favorite place to be wasn’t really on earth at all, but
more so in the sky that looked down upon it. Just as I had done every day before that one,
without any hesitation, swaying stories above the ground, I challenged gravity with a smile. I
remember my best friend towering above me, just as she always had, just about ready to touch
the most prominent cloud in the sky. She had always been better at me at hopping from one limb
to another, and she could scale most of them quicker than Spider Man could scale a skyscraper.
While I bit my lip over my residual feelings of jealousy, the faint chill of the October air acted as
a forewarning of sorts, of the dangers that were to lay ahead.
We had been on a mission that day, to touch the sun once and for all, but it was proving to
be more difficult than we had originally anticipated. The sun had always been a huge part of our
lives, it guided us throughout our recesses, it warmed us up on cold mornings, and it loomed in
the bright morning sky as a constant reminder that the sun was our protection. The sun was the
embodiment of true strength. The sun was mysterious, and beautiful, and completely remarkable,
so much so that it had the power to take your breath away in a second, right before you realized
you were staring into the eyes of the brightest star in the world and if you had not planned to stop
soon you would grow to regret it. The sun just dangled in the sky and everyone revolved around
it, it was as though the sun was the king of the planets, who were all merely peasants arriving
late to the party.
“The higher you go, the harder you fall”, the message my mother always said replayed
like a bad song on the radio, time after time in my head- but still I continued to keep embarking
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into the fluorescent light of the autumnal sky. After all, this wasn’t the first time I tried to see the
sun up close and personal, and with all concerns about vision impairment pushed aside, I was
determined that this time my goal would be met. It certainly wasn’t the first time I’d gotten this
close to doing just that, but never had I been so close, only to realize that the sun was traveling
further and further from my grasp into the darkest parts of the universe. The penetrating wind
storm seemed to be picking up, and the sky was losing it’s vibrance, so my best friend suggested
we venture to another universe on a better day. Determination had set in, full force, and despite
her concern I was determined to reach the sun before he had to go away, after all- we were
already so close.
The journey could not be successfully completed without an adequate amount of self
preservation, or pacing, on my behalf. I inhaled roughly, and let out all of the air my lungs had
encompassed and I traced my breath as it floated through the daytime breeze. As the flames of
the sun were growing dimmer and further away with every passing moment, I knew that pacing
myself would promote the best end result, but it would be all for nothing if I had paced myself
too much. The rays of the magnificent fire ball that had before blistered my skin from being too
close, began to become benevolently distant with every minute, and a chill begun creeping over
every surface of my bruised and beaten body. All that was left was the faint shrill of the hollow
wind, and the highest point of the sunset, that was slowly disappearing behind three dark navy
colored clouds. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to turn away, even as I saw my destination being
ripped away from my clutches back into the emptiness of the universe. Something inside of me
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screamed, “You can do this!”, so I took a few moments to compose myself. A few moments to
catch my breath before I lost it entirely.
Convincing my best pal to travel back down to earth was the easy part, the hard part came
upon realizing that all that was left in this massive earth embedded structure was myself, with a
goal that I wasn’t even sure was capable of being met. It was me, all on my own now, against the
ever growing blackness of the consuming night. I knew that if I were to touch the sun today it
would have to happen within the next ten minutes, before he had gone to sleep indefinitely. The
countdown had begun, and here I was so consumed on the set up of my next move, when these
ideas distracted me so much I ended up taking a step in a very wrong direction. I caught myself
right before I had drifted too far into a hazy fog of thinking, of which weakly described some
informal “plan of attack”, and I remembered that the best way to reach ones destination is to
simply put one foot in front of the other and trudge towards their goal- don’t think about the
consequences.
The wind blew once more at the exact worst moment possible, and I once again felt the
hairs on my skin being ripped to the surface and almost clean out of their root, as goosebumps
rose through my skin in an instant. I heard the faint groan from what sounded like a bird,
reminding me that I wasn’t quite as close to my destination as I needed to be. There are no birds
in outer space. I took in my surroundings once more, and I realized that in order to land on top of
my next lifeline, that was dangling about ten feet in front of me in the most taunting manner I
had ever seen, I would have to take a risk. I would have to jump, and let gravity guide me in the
right direction. A little bit of fate was about to take me a long way, so without much thinking
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behind it, I leaped into the almost-night sky and just like that everything around me went from
dim to pitch black.
I opened my eyes to realize I was falling into the abyss, I had slipped and there was no
way I would see the sun now, but importantly in that moment I wasn’t sure if I would ever see
anything ever again. Could it be possible that my selfish desires, of which I knew weren’t even
entirely possible, had caused me to lose everything that mattered the most? I continued to feel
the world around falling from my grasp, as the now ice cold wind pierced my lips, and my limbs
all had gone numb.
I was approaching the ground, and when I got there, all of my hard work would be
erased. I heard the shrill shriek of my dearest friend, the poor soul who had to watch my demise
while not being able to do anything to prevent it. I could not go out like this, not after how
determined I had been just a few moments ago. While inches from the ground, I threw all of my
body weight (which wasn’t very much) onto one side of my body, in an attempt to break my fall.
And to an extent I did. I was fine, I had survived, and I was going to be okay. No goal of mine
had been met today, but I was thankful my fall had been met with someone there to catch it. I felt
a sigh of relief when I realized I hadn’t hit the concrete below, and an equal sigh of misfortune
when I realized the sun had now completely vanished into the dark of the night. Sure, had the sun
been met with my presence, I would have felt a strong sense of accomplishment, but being
thankful for my survival was the most prominent thing on my mind right now. I felt as though I
was in limbo, was I happy, or was I defeated? The decision wasn’t mine to make, as my friend
was
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crying from joy that I hadn’t been fatally wounded from the plunge. One thing was for certain
though, now more than ever. The sun could wait.
Parody Piece Final Revision:
! The most difficult aspect of creating the parody piece was deciding on a simple
action that could be exaggerated enough to hold humor, while still making some inkling
of sense to my audience. I had settled on the action of climbing trees, because it was
one of my earliest childhood memories. I remember all of the different emotions I felt the
first time I fell out of the tree in my backyard, and how I had convinced myself that I was
falling to my death when in reality I had fallen maybe ten feet at the absolute most.
! The exaggerated feelings I felt inspired me to give more life to the tree, but more
so, life to the sun, because it always seemed as though the sun was our end goal when
we would spend hours on end climbing in my backyard seemingly towards nothing in
particular. I remember being so consumed by the idea of touching the sun when I was
younger that I would spend as much of my time as possible staring at the sun, to the
point where my friends and myself would have contests to see who could stare at the
magnificent ball of fire the longest without blinking.
! I wanted to capture the feelings I had when I was in tree, and how magical it felt
to the seven year old version of myself to feel so alive and at such a higher altitude than
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I was used to. The conflict in the piece occurs when I attempt to rush through my
scaling of the large tree to reach the top prior to the sun fading away for the evening,
and as a result I fall. The most difficult aspect of writing this piece was capturing the
feelings I had felt while falling without actually saying what the feelings were.
! Initially I had included more details about the after effect of me falling from the
tree, but in the end I decided to remove this from the final version of the piece because I
felt that it took away from the overall drama surrounding the action of climbing the tree
and falling from it shortly there after. I also ran into some issues in regards to
maintaining agreeing tenses throughout the paper, which made the time lapse a little
confusing to readers. I definitely attempted to eliminate any time confusion in the final
version of the piece.
! I also neglected to inform my readers on the importance of the sun in the original
version of this parody, and in the revised edition I spent a little more time explaining the
reasoning behind the metaphor of the sun and all that it represented to me as a young
child. I really enjoyed using such colorful language throughout the piece, and the idea of
taking such a boring story and drawing it out and making it much longer than necessary
to achieve a satirical end result. I also attempted to incorporate a little more repetition in
the final version of the parody because I feel as though it allows readers to develop a
better understanding of the surroundings while making it pleasurable for them to read
about as well.
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! I think the most difficult aspect of revising this piece (as well as initially creating it)
was finding the fine line between using colorful language, and using too much of this
type of language to the point where it hurt the overall meaning of the piece by confusing
the audience. I had never previously written a parody piece before, and I think if given
the opportunity again I would pick an even more boring incident because it would be
more entertaining for me as an author to take something so monotonous and give it life
through exaggeration.
Conclusion:
! The most interesting part of these assignments as a whole was their vastly
different subject matter. I wholeheartedly enjoyed each one of the assignments for their
own special reasons, whether it being their simplicity or the rawness of their subject
matter. I think the importance of taking a step back before attempting to write,
regardless of what it is you’re trying to write, and figuring out the appropriate steps you
need to take to achieve your desired end result are very important to the success of
your piece as a whole. I had never really given much thought to the actual writing
process itself prior to this course, but now I find myself coming up with an outline before
beginning any type of assignment. I also find myself trying to replace common words
such as “that” or “many”, etc. with more colorful vocabulary to give my piece an overall
more sophisticated feeling. I am very pleased with the advances I have made as a
writer from the beginning of this semester to now, and I am looking forward to not only
bettering my writing, but taking more writing art’s courses at Rowan and potentially
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pursuing a career in this field- as it is definitely a type of writing I have a great amount of
passion for.
! I feel as though this course allowed us to look at many different types of writing
styles and genre’s and take key lessons away from each one to make us overall more
adaptable writers as a whole. By reading about different theories of writing our class
was also more aware of potential styles, and potential negative effects that a specific
style creates if not used properly. Our class also used investigation, evaluation, and
discover on both ourselves and the world around us to successfully create original work.
Personally, I have become much more critically aware of the things I do wrong in my
own writing, and I have definitely grown a more clear understanding of the importance
of explaining through writing, as opposed to just telling a reader about a specific thing.
These core values have all definitely worked together throughout the semester toward
making our entire class much more particular in regards to our writing, and as a result I
feel we have all benefited in at least some way. I am definitely less afraid now than I had
been before to attempt to write in a style I am not familiar with, thanks to being able to
successfully follow a clear process prior to even beginning to write the first sentence of
a specific assignment. I am looking forward to expanding my capabilities as a writer for
a long time to come.
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