Teacher as Writer - Growing as a Creative Writer

My self selected piece and my piece that I posted on Open Mic at e-anthology were both creative fiction pieces.  These are the first two fictional pieces I have written since I was a child, and, as such, I am in the process of learning how to develop characters and write believable emotions into them.  The piece on e-anthology, "John's Story," received a variety of comments which gave suggestions for how I could add depth to one of the characters, Emily, and advice for how I could get into the main story line faster.  

Because I did not receive comments from anyone in UNCC's SI, I won't go into any more detail on this story.


My self selected piece is called Henry the Traveler.  This is my first attempt at a novel, or - if there doesn't end up being enough material - at least a novella.  It was inspired by a creature who lives in my car.

 I had written less than one page of this story over a year ago and had been saying I needed to work on it since then, though, of course, each day passed by with it untouched.  SI gave me the push to work on it again.  I was able to work on three aspects of my writing.  The first was figuring out how to stop my procrastination and get writing.  I was procrastination mostly because there seemed to be so much work to do.  I mean, when writing a novel, where do you even start?  Sally told that during her thesis, she wrote at least 600 words a day, and I decided to try this technique.

It was a success.  Writing 600 words isn't much, considering it doesn't even fill up two pages.  Being able to see the word count go up by 100 every time I wrote a short paragraph made me feel that I could easily keep writing to 600.  At the same time, 600 words compounded daily adds up to a significant amount.  I added six pages and two and a half scenes in three days.  I have officially found a way to keep myself writing and stop the procrastination!  My goal is to write 600 words at least four days a week for the rest of the summer.


The next thing I learned was how to develop the main characters - Henry and Jenni.  (I've also realized that I really like names that end in the "e" sound because almost all my fictional characters have one.)  Dorry was a great help in thinking about what kind of character Jenni is going to be.  I had already decided she was her own worst enemy, convincing herself that no one likes her and allowing that notion to affect her relationships, but I hadn't gotten farther than that.  Dorry helped me develop her character by getting me to think through how Jenni was going to react to Henry.  Fueled by her question, "Is she the Harry Potter type character?" my writing group mates started describing different people they knew and how they may react to being talked to by a moving purple fuzzy ball. As I worked through how she would react (choosing the personality Dorry originally suggested), I started developing a personality for her.  

 I also worked on a scene that would occur later in the novel from the Murray characters. I had written about a place that was important to me - a place called Interlochen, where some of my family lives - and Carrie pushed me to think about why this place was so important, namely figuring out what emotions I attached to this place.  

 

By analyzing my own motivations and feelings, I was able to add motivations and feelings to Jenni by adapting my memory to her situation.

The third thing I worked on was voice.  My writing group helped me with Henry's character development by helping me think about his voice.  Dorry pointed out - and Carrie agreed - that Henry's voice switches from less formal to informal (the informal is actually true to the narrator I have written him to be).  The picture below is a piece of my second draft after my group had commented on it.  The black is my question and the colors change for each responder, Dorry, Carrie and Tara, respectively. 

  

While Carrie and Dorry aided my thinking in keeping his voice consistent, Tara also helped by reminding us that Henry would likely be more formal with a person he had just met.  I am working on combining both ideas to figure out how Henry would sound formally... finding a happy medium, in a way.

I will be able to take the questions and advice about character development and voice that I have been given by my writing group and Sally's 600 words/day idea into finishing Henry's story and future fiction.

Finally, I grew as poet.  I have written poetry since I was 13, but I had never written a multi-voiced poem.  I started playing around with ideas of how to write and read multi-voiced poems while working with Melissa as we read the polar bear/SUV poem.  We really struggled with who should read when until we hear Dorry and Carrie read their poem.  From there, my writing group started talking about how to make Tara's poem a two voice poem and I was able to see how to take an idea - or a poem that is currently uni-voiced - and turn it into many voices.  The multi-voiced poem I wrote was sparked during Ashley's demo.  It was interesting, not only to write representing many people in a single poem, but also figuring out how to structure the poem.