You now need to take us on a journey of 2 pieces of your writing that you are most proud of from the semester. Each will be its own paragraph whereby you explain what your piece is about, your process of writing it, any challenges you faced.
I was inspired to emulate this piece from a poem that Claire B. did that can be found here.
Title-> The title was inspired by the first line of the poem and also the fact that I just really love the word golden and all the hidden meanings behind it, so I wanted to add it in for sure as a title. In the beginning, I was just going to call this piece ‘The Fading Gold’, but I had a deeper connection with My Golden Boy.
17-word summary-> My Golden Boy follows the inner conflict many face with mental illness and how it affects their loved ones.
Purpose & Audience-> The purpose of this piece was to bring attention to mental illnesses and how they affect more than just the person affected. It was to soften the blow of what mental illnesses are really like by using flowery language and colours to symbolise the contrast in the golden boy’s emotions. For an audience, I would say anyone can read it since it brings awareness to a grave issue that is usually ignored by the public.
Influence-> Most of the influence came from Claire B.’s piece that she wrote and past works that I had written about mental illness as well.
Craft & Style-> I tried to mimic Claire’s style of haiku’s without really doing a haiku. I also loved the idea to use colours to represent emotions that I really want to play with more. Now that I have also read Impulse, I want to try out that kind of stylistic choice more.
Experimentation, Revision, Feedback-> This piece was a giant experiment for me, and I loved every minute of it. I had attempted to write from a perspective and voice that I wasn’t really used to but I wanted to give it a try, and I feel like it worked for the better. I would like to go back to this piece one day with more experienced eyes to maybe clean it up and make it longer. I get scared at the thought of writing longer poetry because I feel like I’ll lose the reader but this is definitely a piece I would want to try to elaborate more on in greater detail. Maybe even do a little description of how the golden boy was before he started becoming blue.
This was the first piece that I had ever put onto this site for the world to see and it holds such a special place in my heart because of it. This was an emulation from a piece by Sarah.
Title-> The title was chosen to just sum up what was happening in the writing. I didn’t put much thought into it, but I think that the end result for the title turned out really good and said something impactful.
17-word summary-> Letters to the oppressor from the oppressed. When the oppressor finally wanted to stand up and take charge of their life.
Purpose & Audience-> The voice of the oppressed is the voice least heard all around the world. It’s one of the most impactful in my opinion, but they are kept silent like captives. This was a piece that I wanted to write to try to capture that voice and give it a chance to be heard. I tried to make it a little vague so more people could relate to it in many different ways. The audience, like many of my pieces, can be anyone that wants to read it. For this piece, in particular, I would say that this should be read by people who feel like they’re treated unjustly.
Influence-> I was mainly influenced by Sarah.
Craft & Style-> I wanted to make it in a letter-type form with ‘Dear You,” at the beginning of the paragraphs but I didn’t want the letters to end. In my mind, I did this to show that once someone does something, it cannot be undone and will never truly finish or leave. I left every sentence ending in a question to leave the reader thinking about what had happened in the letter. My style was still trying to be discovered at this point, but you can begin to see traces of my repetition style.
Experimentation, Revision, Feedback-> This was the first piece that I had ever publically shared, and I was so nervous. I found a lot of my writing ticks through this piece, and this whole thing was just a big experiment for me to try to find my voice. Like my feedback for my other piece, I would like to expand this piece a little because I feel like it ends too abruptly. I would also like to experiment with writing in the voice of the oppressor.
Final Thoughts-> This is one of my more shaky pieces but I love it so much. It was the work that really helped me discover who I was in a writer and what I could do with just a pen and paper. I am so grateful that this piece helped me find my voice and love for writing and for that, it will always have a special place in my heart.