Whew! It was a lot of work pushing that thing out. The past few months have been tiresome and grueling. I was sleep deprived, my moods were all over the place and oh my god, the amount of times I got up to pee…insane. What? No, I wasn’t pregnant! I was birthing an ePortfolio! I worked on it into the late hours of the night (hence the sleep deprivation), I kept changing my mind about the direction I was going (hence the mood swings), and I functioned on copious amounts of coffee (hence the peeing). This project has become in a sense my newborn child. I read chapters on the best techniques and methods to create it, I nurtured it through the beginning stages of life, and I tried my best to teach it my values.
So here it is. I hope it gives a sense of who I am as a writer and that people enjoy reading it, but if not that’s ok, because I enjoyed making it. As a first time parent to an online portfolio, I’ve learned a lot. This thing was hard work! But, I think one of the biggest ways I’ve grown as a writer this semester is that I started to think about the bigger picture. Most other writing intensive classes I’ve been a part of have never required me to write for an audience outside of the classroom. This class forced me to do exactly the opposite of that. For the first time I got to think about what I wanted to write, why I wanted to write it, and for whom. I realized I’m much better at writing to other people (for example in the form of letters or a blog post) than I am at writing to or for myself.
Something I want to work on between now and the capstone is exactly that–writing for myself. I thought I could try doing it in the form of creative fiction. This is a genre I really love and want to explore more, but the direction I chose for the gateway took me inward to a place of self-reflection. I think it would be beneficial to expand my writing skills by working in genres I am less comfortable in. I really enjoyed the creative fiction class I took my freshman year and want to revisit the exercises and assignments I did for it. One of the outside artifacts I included in my ePortfolio was actually a short story from that class. It wasn’t necessarily going to win any awards, but I liked it, because it was the first piece of writing I had created purely from my imagination. Yes, imagination plays a part in all writing as does creativity, but fiction takes it a step further. The gateway course taught me how to write for audiences outside of the classroom and now I want to write for audiences outside of the classroom without being forced to do so.
I’ll get back to you on how that goes…
Link?