Reflection

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

 

My mom has always told me that I have a way with words. I mean always; I don’t remember a time when I didn’t consider myself to be a writer. I usually wrote personal narratives— stories about myself that I held close to my heart with powerful conclusions that told lessons, conveyed purpose, and culminated to a definite end. I loved writing those stories. I still do. Whenever I can create an essay out of a little piece of my average life, I feel proud and excited and, something I can’t say I feel very often, open.

I didn’t ever stray from personal narratives, though. Besides in the assignments that I was forced to do, I stayed away from poetry, fiction, research, and other creative writing in general. Personal narratives were the stories that held my power, they were what made my mom tear up when she read my writing, the ones that made her say “Emma, please do something with writing in your life.”

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Fast forward a few grades, some English classes, and lots of personal narratives, and here we are, in the gateway to the Minor in Writing. As excited as I was to start this program and this class, I was also nervous about it’s open-endedness, and pretty content with the idea that I would not be expanding my experience with genres. Naturally, then, I started with an experiment I knew a lot about: dance. It was the perfect loophole that allowed me to be creative and unique without challenging myself too much. Granted, I had to work hard on this experiment researching autism, revising choreography, listening to find the perfect song, and practicing my moves. But it wasn’t a risk. Combining dance and autism was safe. The biggest thing this experiment taught me is that I prefer helping others experience the joy of dancing more than myself, but it didn’t teach me much about writing or composition.

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I think I really embraced the riskiness in my third experiment, a free verse poem. I had never written this type of poem, and I had little knowledge of poetry as a genre, but I decided to create a poem to test my limits. And my limits were surely tested. I researched dozens of other free verse poems to find inspiration, and despite how passionate I am about the topic I chose, I could never find the right words to make up my poem. I felt useless, like what I was writing had no point. Was writing a few stanzas about my own experiences really the best I could be doing to spread the word about a topic I care about? My interest in writing dwindled.

One thing I love about writing is the feeling of satisfaction I get when I put that last period on the page. I love rereading my paper, reflecting on my sentences and my revisions and on all the hard work I’ve dedicated to the essay. It reminds me why I call myself a writer. Maybe it’s something with the unfinished nature of these two experiments, but I didn’t get that feeling at the end of my dance and poem experiment.

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My second experiment, though, a children’s book, felt different from the start. Not because it wasn’t a challenge— I had endless research to do and I wasn’t even sure where to begin. Would I illustrate it myself? I’m no artist… What would the plot be? How could I make this a book worth reading? How could I produce it? And not because it was too hard for me to enjoy— I can’t complain about reading all my favorite children’s books as research or about spending time coloring. It felt different because it felt right. It was a risk that I was excited to take, one that would teach me what it means to be a writer and how I can fit into that definition.

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I started with the idea that I needed a book directed toward three year old students with severe autism that would help teach a lesson about food. The book that I had been using previously had little substance, so I imagined a colorful children’s book full of food and color vocabulary, pictures, characters, a moral, and a tie-in to the lesson plan I had created. From there, after hours of research, I created a plot line that would appeal to the students while also fulfilling my requirements. I invented Rodney, a boy that only ate red food. It was exciting to watch my piece grow as I made each purposeful decision. He would be a boy because boys are far more likely to be autistic than girls. He would like red in honor of my cousin who conquers the disorder in the same red shirt every day. The pictures would be simple and large to please the children who were overstimulated by more complex pictures. Rodney would eventually eat and appreciate all sorts of food, just as I preach accepting all kinds of people. I spent hours making sure that each of my 11 spreads were just right, and although I didn’t know exactly what I was doing due to my lack of experience, it was thrilling to watch an idea become a reality.

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When I consider my life as a writer, I have very rarely gone from idea to reality. Usually, like with my personal narratives, I take a reality, a true story of my life, and turn it into an idea on paper with an introduction and figurative language and a moral. In this class, however, I challenged myself to step out of my box of personal narratives. Of course, I still snuck them in a little bit— my poem was from a point of view similar to mine, and creating dances has been part of my life’s narrative for many years. I create such narratives to make me happy, to validate my love of writing. But this children’s book was not for me (okay, yes, it was initially created to help with a lesson I was giving… but that’s not the point). I created it for children. For students that struggle with feeling different than their peers. For parents who feel alone with their child’s diagnosis. For classrooms full of the most creative, honest, fun-loving kids that live on this earth. This is for them. Knowing that gives me just as much satisfaction as my mom’s teary eyes she gets after reading my personal stories. More, maybe. Helping other people is what I want to do with my life, and I’ve learned that writing about my own experiences isn’t going to be the most effective way to do that. Other students reminded me of that, too. Whether I was reading Jess’ stories of sexual assault survivors or hearing Emma discuss women in their future fields, I came to realize just how important our writing can be for helping others through major aspects of their lives. My writing, just like Jess and Emma’s, could inspire and serve.

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Stepping out of my comfort zone in this class took my passion for supporting others to another level. Creating a dance reminded me that I love to teach. Attempting a poem encouraged me to go bigger, to try harder, to do everything I could to make my passion known. And finally, creating a book allowed me to do just that. With this book, I can teach students not only the lesson plan about food words and fine motor skills, but also what it means to be accepting and how to be the best version of yourself you can fathom. That’s what writing can do. I have rediscovered the power my words can have, outside of personal narratives, and I plan to chase that power for many years to come.