I’ve never been one for writing. I always used to think of myself as someone who couldn’t write, not even an essay for class. I never really found a passion or therapeutic feeling from putting a bunch of words down onto a page. When I came to college, I knew there would be a lot of writing involved so I could do one of two things. I could moan, complain and get bad grades on papers. Or, I could practice, work hard, and put the time into making the paper great. Along with not thinking of myself as a great writer, I don’t think of myself as a “creative” person. I can’t come up with fun topics off the top of my head like Professor Whiteacre can. I went back and forth for a while deciding whether or not I wanted to take this class. On one hand, it knocked out two general education courses. One the other hand, it was a creative writing class and I was not creative or a writer. In the end, I decided to take the class and I really surprised myself. 

The first couple of weeks in the class were overwhelming because I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was writing too realistically and needed to just have fun with it. I think the biggest challenge was to come up with a story that has been used. There is so much out in our world today that it is hard to come up with things and not model your story after something you already know. My biggest challenge was the fairytale re-telling because I wanted to make it literal and lifelike. I think this was the area of writing that I had the most fun with though because it was something I could control. I was the author and I could make the story twist and turn as I please. 

I had a lot of fun with the poems. I thought that would be the genre that I struggled with the most because when I think of poems, I think of rhyming schemes. It’s hard to make every poem that you write rhyme and luckily, I didn’t have to. I had a lot of fun learning the different techniques that poetry encompasses. Overall, I think this was my favorite genre because I could make it realistic and dramatic or I could make it fun and light-hearted. The poems generally tailored to whatever my emotions and feelings were on the day that I wrote them. 

This class has made me realize that I do have some creative juices that flow inside of me. I just need to not take writing so seriously and have fun with it. I have grown as a writer and I am proud of the pieces that I have written. 

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