My essential question is how does an out of practice writer become an active, disciplined writer?

Before Senior Project I read a book that a librarian friend from outside of school recommended. The book was called One More Thing and it was written by one of the producers of the show The Office, B. J. Novak. The book is a collection of comedic short stories. When I was rewriting my Senior Project I kept the formatting of One More Thing in mind. It has the exact formatting that I want my Senior Project to have. The differences between my Senior Project and One More Thing are that I don’t only write comedic short stories. My short stories stretch across multiple genres and that is what I am aiming for. My Senior Project focuses on exploration. Every short story that I write is an exploration of myself through writing, because I have not had the adequate space or time to creative write in a while. Another difference is that B. J. Novak is writing for the world, for anyone and everyone. I am writing for a small, controlled group of people: my cohort. However, I keep my writing relatable to everyone. I do not tailor my writing to fellow LREI-ers. I try to keep my writing as vague as possible. For example, I do not write about specific experiences that only people who attend LREI would go through, like the lip sync.

I am also reading a book, Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis. The story is a retelling of the classic Greek myth about Eros and Psyche. However, the story is not told from either Eros or Psyche’s perspective. It is told from the perspective that the author made up. This was a very interesting choice because when you think of Greek myths, and stories in general, you would think that the story would be told from the perspective of the person who is going through the main event of the story. It would be like if the Harry Potter series was told from Crabbe or Goyle’s perspective. While I’m reading this book, I am thinking a lot about whose perspective my stories are told through. Recently I have been exploring the idea of how perspective operates in a story. It is causing me to reevaluate whose perspectives my short stories should be told through.

Our prompt:

In your case, text can be many things: a seminal book/series/story/poem that inspired you either in style or substance; a text (print, video, audio) you are directly responding to through your own writing; words from other authors such as YALLWest sessions or blog posts you might have encountered; a text — book, show, album, etc. — you are engaging with concurrent to senior project; the writing your cohort peers have shared… Text can mean many things, and to a writer everything — even an overheard conversation — can become a text to explore and reflect upon.

For your CR, discuss the text you have chosen and how it interacts (reflects, inspires, etc.) with your own writing. You may also want to consider the nature of text in general, or on the tension between the creator and the consumer (this circles back to that first conversation about workshop norms and the voice of the author in critical responses).

This is a different prompt than some cohorts are doing for CR#3 (you’ll be doing that one next week), so please put a prompt into the final version for the blog so it’s clear what you are reflecting on.