2025 ENGL 2200:
CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP PORTFOLIO
SEMESTER REFLECTION INTERVIEW
Question 4: What is the most memorable example of a successful creative work that was focused on experimenting with form, genre, or structure? What makes it stand out to you, and what does it teach you about the possibility of pushing boundaries in your own writing?
The poetry part of the course challenges me to fit ideas into a structure, which is the different poetic styles. From understanding what I was limited to, I was able to look at the angles I would have missed. Meaning it helped with finding more creative and impactful ways to deliver an idea. So, from writing and studying poetry, there exists a boundary that can be crossed, where it may appear that you are being limited, but the truth is that within the restrictions, there are places where you can expand and find out that these limitations aren’t holding you back as much as you thought they would. In“Sestina: When It Ends, I End”, lines like “The gap between the stars remains not fill” and “ Let me sleep my fill” need to end with the same word. But in each line, the word “fill” has a slightly different meaning from the other.
Question 5: What singular idea, piece of craft advice, or practical skill will you most take away from this course that could be applied to your future classes, creative projects, or even your professional life?
In storytelling, the author’s ability to frame a scene with detail without having the reader ever having to experience the same thing is noteworthy to me. Being able to communicate an idea indirectly is very useful and impactful. In my short story “May the Sparrow Carry My Love to You Too”, when Suzume, the narrator and protagonist, enters the kitchen of her childhood home and says, “I can still smell the mackerel that you used to grill in the pan as I sat at the table because you knew I liked eating them.” The remark makes it clear not just the fact that the character likes mackerel but also that the character is being reminded of her past and her relationship with her mother. In this case, the reader may not like mackerel, or even have the experience where their mother had made them mackerel, but the focus here is that most would have some good memory of their mother that they can return to. So with the character here, the reader can understand her sentiment. Beyond writing, this technique of show no tell can be utilized, namely in character design. I often enjoy designing fantastical characters and being able to communicate to the viewer who the character is through details like clothes, hair, and face is more effective and useful.
Question 9: Consider the various themes and motifs present across your work this semester (e.g., isolation, memory, nature, justice). What unifying creative obsession or core thematic concern seems to drive your writing, and how did this course allow you to explore it further?
The central or common themes found across my works are love and loss. These concepts exist in a range and are difficult to capture. This course allowed me to be able to explore these concepts through different forms of writing, letting me see what these concepts look like within different literary styles. In the poem “Sestina: When It Ends, I End’ and the “Screenplay: Final Submission”, they both explore the idea of love. The sestina has a greater emphasis on romantic love, with the lines like “Because I cannot remove you even if I try, for I would rather be stained” communicate how romantic love have affect the narrator. In the screenplay, there is a clear focus on the main protagonist, Stephen, and his love for music. Then, in the short story “May the Sparrow Carry My Love to You Too” and the “Screenplay: Chekhov’s Gun”, they both explore the idea of loss. The short story explores how the main protagonist struggles with the regret she feels from the loss. As for the screenplay, it’s how the character, Mrs. Olson, responds to the loss of her husband. Overall, the majority of my work lends itself to love or loss or both, and I feel it is what I am comfortable telling and writing about.
Question 2: Where do you believe the writer’s primary responsibilities lie: to their own artistic vision and truth, or to their audience? Why? Cite an example from your work that tested this belief.
I believe that the author’s responsibility is to their own artistic vision. The audience shouldn’t stop an author from including certain details or limit what the author can do with their story. The author is here to tell a story, which could be fictional, fantastical, or historical. The author is the instrument in how these stories are to be told. It is not to say the author has the full range of freedom to write anything because the writing still needs to be coherent for the audience to be able to have a takeaway. The story becomes pointless when the audience cannot respond and evaluate the ideas the story is presenting. But the author would have the authority over their writing and not the audience. In my short story “May the Sparrow Carry My Love to You Too”, I can see how the reader can be confused about the structure of the story because, yes, it is choppy and even disorienting. But to me, as I continue to reread what was written, I feel it is already what it needs to be. My thought has always been that the story will be very disjointed because it is the main protagonist’s experience of grief and returning to her memories.
Question 6: Identify a character, persona, or poetic “speaker” you created this semester that felt the most difficult to render honestly. What was the challenge in depicting them, and what vulnerability did you have to confront personally to finally capture their voice? Cite the specific work.
The narrator for “Ode: Only If” would be the hardest poetic “speaker” for me to render across the works created this semester. Although the structure of an ode was not complicated, I was trying to do too much with the ode. I want to infuse the admiration for someone and the feeling of longing for them. It is difficult here because ode are meant focus only on the admiration and the elevation of someone or something, but I still chose to challenge myself to blend the longing for them into the ode. Because to long for means you saw the goodness of that person. I started to overcome this difficulty when I was able to look into myself, the contrasting feelings of love and yearning that I have experienced, to weave these two feelings throughout the poem while trying to put emphasis on the good qualities of the person. So lines like “With the laugh that quakes the room” use a positive memory, in this case the laugh, and tie it to the impact it has on the speaker, which is quaking, to indicate the longing.
