Category: Creative Writing
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In search of a writing community
I don’t want writing to prevent me from meeting people; I decided that writing should help me meet people.
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Tuesday dance classes
Before graduation, my creative writing professor said that people who go into publishing rarely succeed in becoming writers. Not that they don’t have talent, but because they’re so busy nurturing someone else’s writing that they forget about their own. My professor told me I should not waste my talent. After that, he said I should…
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Subway stories
I felt and saw everything that I’d normally tune out if I was in a familiar setting: personal spaces being invaded; rap music blaring from Beats—so loud that its bass causes your arms’ hairs to tingle; seated people staring at crotches and asses of standing people; and inevitable leers from gross individuals.
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Am I a poet now?
I just handed in a short poetry collection that I worked on for a semester. That’s right: poetry. This class was certainly a transformative experience. I’ve learned to appreciate the emotional stake, the inspired language, and the truth in works of several poets (Sylvia Plath, James Tate, James Wright, to name a few). I’ve also…
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Learning to be a poet
We learned how to write tanka poetry a few weeks back. A tanka poem is a traditional Japanese form of poetry. It follows a 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic pattern and can go on for a long time. We only stop once we reach infinity – that is, until we feel like we can’t get anything else out of…
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Time to Wake
We had to write about a specific place in our first poetry assignment. I couldn’t find one that stuck out to me, so I thought of the times when I felt comforted and loved: in my bed in Apartment Four on Scott Road – back in the old days.
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A literary semester
It’s my last semester at Fairfield, so I thought I should take all the classes that I’ve been wanting to take. Why not? Advanced Portfolio Workshop Led by former Crazyhorse editor, Carol Ann Davis, this class is a capstone course for creative writing majors. By the end of this course we are supposed to have…
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This is what I listen to when I feel discouraged as a writer
Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo. Some great words about storytelling from Ira Glass, host and producer of “This American Life.” I think David also did a wonderful job with translating the audio into visuals.
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What I learned from reading and writing fanfiction
Once upon a time, I avidly read fanfiction. To those unfamiliar with fanfiction, scholar Bronwen Thomas best describes it as “stories produced by fans based on plot lines and characters from either a single source text or else a “canon” of works; these fan-created narratives often take the pre-existing storyworld in a new, sometimes bizarre, direction.”…
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Convention Craziness Part I
From March 7 to 8, as one of the managing editors of Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose, I attended my first Association of Writers and Writing Programs convention (AWP).
Loan Le 