Creative writing class gave me lots of “aha” moments that I took from as inspiration. A lot of these “aha” moments came from the different pieces that we looked at in class, as well as listening to other students share their pieces. These “aha” moments were a sentence or two that resonated with me the first time I either read or heard them, and these sentences would often end up being the start of a poem or the inspiration behind a random piece. I also found that I could pull bits and pieces from my journal and the writing that we do everyday in our journals. Though my journal is a mess of random, not-so-great writing, there is some gold that I can usually pick out as I go through and read my journal. A lot of these little golden snippets ended up under my blog page titled Poetry Shiz.
As a reader this semester, I have accomplished a lot more reading than I have in quite a while. Working on monthly reading ladders helped me to stay on a course of reading more frequently, even if it is not everyday. Though I do admit that near the end of the semester I did began to fall apart with my reading habits, and did not read as much as I would hope. However as the busy school year comes to an end, I hope to develop and implement a more strict reading schedule getting in some reading everyday. I, in fact, hope to read a book that is studied in grade 12, so that it may help me next year. The best book that I read this year would have to be Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey. This was the first poetry book that I have read and I absolutely loved it. I could say, without a doubt, that this book was also a significant inspiration to writing more and more poetry, as it pushed me to try something new and experience a writing style that I have never really sought out. In this way, reading became an inspiration for my writing throughout this course, giving me new ideas and helping me to try new writing styles and techniques.
As a writer I have accomplished writing more and more. Through the course I have constantly found myself writing with pen in hand, and it is because of this that as a writer I have began to discover my strengths and weaknesses and where my best writing exists. I have developed a love for poetry and short story writing, and I also took a chance at writing a feature article, realizing what a great way it is to share what’s on your mind with the world. Practicing grammar and learning new writing techniques has also served me well as I work towards improving my writing. Lastly, emulating from the works of others, including professional authors and the incredible authors in class, has both given me inspiration and helped to improve my own writing style. For next year, I do not think that I will be taking creative writing, though I would like to do so. It just wont fit in with my busy grade 12 schedule, and even if I do manage to take it don’t believe i’ll be as successful. I believe that the most important steps that I can take if I want to improve my writing, which I really do, is to write continuously and get feedback so that you can know your strengths and what you do well and also recognize your weaknesses and work to fix those.
