My Journey of My Personal Style and Growth:

In this essay I will review and reflect on my journey and developmental growth that I experienced throughout the course of Creative Writing. I will also talk about my early understandings at the beginning of when I started the first semester of creative writing, then as I developed into a more experienced writer I will reflect I what I thought I did well. Finally I will give a summarised conclusion of this first semester and I will set a new goal for the next semester. 

When I joined the Poetry Unit I felt incomplete and lacking, in terms of my skill in the subject, as I had not written or completed any form of poetry before. However, my lack of understanding gave me a chance to embrace and absorb each lesson with a non-argumentative view as in the past I would often think differently of each subject than what the lessons and teachers provided me with. I found myself going into depth with emotions and thoughts. Also, unlike any other type of writing I found I could convey the deeper emotions and thoughts in a way that was more easily describable in the form of poetry. In that unit I wrote at least six to seven good poems that conveyed thoughtfulness and emotion well. My favourite poem out of the selection would have to be Empty as the writing emitted powerful negative emotions throughout it’s lines perfectly and it had a almost rhythmic bounce to it unlike my other poems. For example I wrote: “Grinning skulls, sick old fools, and dripping, drooping, dreams. Slipping away into the night in emptiness it seems”. In the end I was extremely happy with my progress throughout the poetry unit and I felt more comfortable with writing poetry as a form of writing. 

My favourite unit would have to be the Multimedia Unit. I already love creating and editing videos and therefore I knew a bit about the subject already. However, this unit helped me to change my opinion and understanding in the importance of powerful presentations and media that can change other’s opinions and the understandings on certain, selected topics. I learned that an image can really be worth a thousand words or more and that imagery can change everything, from the mood of the piece, to the tone, to even the opinions of the listeners and watchers that are viewing the presentation. I also finally learned that background music and sound, in terms of tone of voice, can be powerful contributors to the presentation’s engaging aspects and the conveying mood and tone that presentation radiates. In the end my understanding of multimedia expanded and I felt improved and happy with what I learned in that unit and understanding of it. 

As I developed new skills throughout the course I sometimes understood some units more easily than others. One of the easier and more understandable units, for me, was the introduction to the course as I felt my social and writing skills usually already co-existed in my life quite a lot. I felt comfortable and confident in the unit and I passed with almost one hundred percent on every assignment and discussion page assignment. For me, however, the hardest part of the discussion page assignments was responding and giving my opinion onto other’s work and assignments. I felt happy and thankful with the feedback others gave me but I didn’t know how I should approach others’ work with comments with criticism. This lead to me losing some of my marks on discussion page assignments as I felt awkward and non-communicative towards other people if I had to start the comment or discussion first. In the end however, I changed my view on the matter and I felt I was more comfortable with responding to others with criticism. As a result my marks/grades for my assignments in that unit rose and I completed the unit happy with the result. 

Another unit I felt quite comfortable in was the Fictional Writing Unit. I felt my strength  and skill in that unit was already quite strong and well developed as my brain constantly gave me deeper feelings to insert into the story, which in turn, helped work with my generative brainstorming of engaging and interesting ideas that I could use in the story. Once I managed to create a great, well-thought-out idea for my fictional short-story I managed to, in the end, to plan a really structure of events and character with a lot of great writing aspect I learned in previous units.  However, as I wrote paragraphs and paragraphs each day I realised a problem. I was writing way too much. As first, this didn’t seem like a problem to me but I soon realised that the length of the story could be a major issue in the final steps of submitting of project. First, other students would need to read the whole story to respond in a fair way. The story was a huge ten pages long and in the end only one person commented who ended up only reading the first chapter. I eventually shortened the story but I also learned a valuable lesson in writing: quality is better than quantity. In the end because I managed to apply that lesson to my work and cut the information I didn’t need in the story, I ended up with full marks on the final unit-project. 

To summarise my journey into this course I would like to give a conclusion of how I thought I did on the first semester in the form of a overview. I felt this first semester was a learning experience like no other. I realised that sometimes you need to change your way of writing to make it better even if its hard to do. In the end I felt like I embrace each unit and lesson in a different and unique way and I understood the course and units with full realisation and understanding. As a goal for next semester I would like to be more open to lesson information and teacher or student feedback. In conclusion hope you enjoyed this essay I wrote about my writing journey and I would also like to say this is just the beginning of a long journey to writing and realising my talents inside writing as well and developing them.