When I was writing for the first time in this class, I discovered and explored a whole another medium of art and writing. I have never written anything like narrative before, therefore it was a pure excitement for me. I also have never opened up so much in any essay or literary work before. One of the main challenges for me was to tell about my childhood and relationship with my parents. I told a lot of unpleasant details which I would never tell almost anyone, for example, that I argued and sighted with my mother and that I never lived with my father. This revelation definitely made me engaged in the collaborative and social aspects of the writing process, because I shared all of these details with my peers, they read it thoroughly and gave me feedback on such personal aspects of my life. Furthermore, we helped each other by fixing our mistakes and giving suggestions on the writing techniques. While writing my work, I explored and analyzed, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations. Before beginning the writing process, I went to some of my favorite books and used them as a reference to guide myself whether which genre I would like to stick with while writing my narrative and how to find the right approach and direct my thinking.

I believe that writing is a very subjective task, although it has a universal approach — try, try, try. No ones work is perfect or good enough from the first draft. It takes practice in everything and writing isn’t an exclusion. Our class helped me a lot with a narrative style of writing, because I have never done anything quite like that before. Art Literacy Narrative was truly a very helpful assignment, and all the study sheets guided me on how to translate your feelings and thoughts on paper. I used to have a huge problem with putting my thoughts and feelings together into a connected text before I came into this class. I was a good student in literature class in my high school, but creative writing definitely wasn’t my strong side.

I am a huge fan of such writers as Nikolai Gogol and Steinbeck. All great and legendary poets and novelists have their own, unique writing style, which makes them so special and loved by thousands of readers. Therefore, writing my papers I looked up to their techniques and tried to develop my own theory of writing. I figured that writing is a very emotional process and it has to be done with heart and strong feelings in order to get your readers feel the same. I find this type of art quite similar to acting: when you act, you have to remember a particular situation or just make yourself feel like whatever is happening on the stage is real, consequently your emotions appear genuine and believable. The same thing is with writing. Although I find writing more flexible: I usually suddenly remember a particular event which made me angry, happy or sad and let my writing “absorb” this emotion and reveal it in my narrative by making a small part which could be in the end of my writing, middle or beginning. Then I read through and try to connect all the small “emotional” pieces into a whole, finished creation. Sometimes I also delete the parts which wouldn’t fit in the overall text and add new ones, reread and fix it again and again. Besides the sense and meaning of the work, I find it significant to create the impression of genuine emotion and true feeling, because that is what captures the reader and makes him lose track of time. The narrative essay was a very intimate and sensitive assignment for me, because I opened a lot about my personal life. I told about my family and unfortunate experiences I had to go through. Probably, it would come out very boring and unappealing if I just provided the same details, but with no real emotion. The impact of feelings is so high that I even feel like meaning could be absent at all, but the overall work would still be capturing and strikingly interesting.

Throughout the semester we wrote many papers and did a lot of assignments. In the beginning I’ve already begun developing my own theory, however, I was still confused whether I should use it in my work or not. I would also tend to let my emotions and thoughts “flow” through the paper, however, I wasn’t concerned about the overall picture, organization and connection between parts. Nevertheless, towards the end of our semester my thoughts became more organized and I found the right way of using my theory of writing. Now, all my writing assignments have pretty much the same structure and therefore similar style. I am pretty sure that use of emotions are the predominant factor which affected the creation of my own theory of writing. I feel like text with lack or, furthermore, absence of emotions and feelings turns out dull and tedious. I learned to open myself up during the writing process and be more genuinely myself rather than trying to copy someone else’s writing style. For example, while writing the description of a work of art, I tried to use as many emotions as I could. “Description” seems like a very technical and feelingless process, however without understanding the artwork, seeing its density and the emotional part of it, description couldn’t be accurate. When I was describing the tone and pattern of strokes I tried to let as many emotions out as possible, because in order to see the painting throughout you have to be very sensitive, because it lacks movement and other physical factors besides color, shape and lines unlike movies of music videos, for example. Art is very intimate and it has to be genuine and honest in order to be valuable. I definitely agree with the statement: “good writing comes with good reading”. You have to be aware of other writers, find your favorite with a familiar mindset and let his or her work guide you through your own work. However there is a very small, but important point: you have to understand when you are learning from the writer and when you begin to steal his unique style, thus destroying your own creativeness and originality.

I think that the theory of writing I developed for myself will help me significantly outside of the class. The way you write is the way you think and, consequently, the way you communicate with the outside world. Many other classes require paperwork and times when you are going to talk, so therefore, the knowledge of how to direct your thinking in one class, will help you do so in other classes. Similarly with your work and your friends or family. If you know how to be genuine and organized on paper, you will cope with the everyday world a lot better by being so verbally.

In the future I plan to be a filmmaker, particularly, video editor. This job requires you to be good at writing, because prior to producing a good film, you need to have a good script. In order to have a good script you need to be good at writing. Editing videos is a purely creative process and each work turns out as an art piece with a storyline. When you have the knowledge of depicting your thoughts and emotions in an organized, appealing way, you will also do so in the editing process. Each video is like a small film with a small story. Class of creative expression definitely influenced my writing skills, thus, my future video creations and, probably, career in general.