Third Prompt - Reflecting on the Journey so Far (10/08)

In Retrospect 13

This is a streamlined version of [PROMPT 3] #12: Third Prompt - Reflecting on the Journey so Far.

 

In this post, I reflect on my progress I'd made during the past week, writing the Subject 3 draft (which I eventually uploaded), and developing Withdrawal Symptoms for the Monday submission. I realised I incorporated all of the advice the nonfiction authors had shared in their interviews as well, which was fantastic.

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"This week's blog prompt:

• Reflect on some of the key insights you personally have had thus far in the studio about writing in the essay (creative nonfiction) form;
• How you have applied them in practice (or not); and
• Where you might apply them in the future..."

 It's been a wild ride so far in the studio. I'm surprised by how much we've all been able to achieve in this 3 week intensive boot camp. At the end of the first week, I was scared because I didn't know what my piece was going to look like. After all, I might have been staring at something close to my FINAL in a few weeks time. I'm surprised by all the work I've done in the past couple of days as well.

I started my absolute garbage "will-never-see-the-light-of-day" report-style draft on August 4th (Tuesday) and finished it on Wednesday, after class. As I yolo'd my conclusion, I wrote this paragraph:

"When attempting to fall asleep, Subject 3 spends several minutes fantasising about human touch, taking her even longer to fall asleep. It appears she's suffering from withdrawal symptoms for the social contact humans normally take for granted in their day to day lives, prior to COVID-19."

Key phrase: Withdrawal Symptoms. Upon realising my essay was about that, after Thursday's Mythology class in the evening, I worked from 9pm - 12am to rewrite everything in a memoir style centred around my downwards spiral from normality. I had also gone a bit too personal in my report style, more so than what I was comfortable with sharing, so I had to pull back a bit.

After presenting my piece for workshopping on Friday morning, I knew I had to do a full rewrite for Monday's submission, but also under a larger theme of loneliness. This came after my colleagues encouraged me to explore other themes beyond myself. On Saturday morning, as I idly browsed Wikipedia on withdrawal symptoms, I ended up clicking a few links to get to Loneliness. So in came the loneliness research on Saturday (some of which left me crying), and the full overhaul for submission on Sunday.

So, now we're here!

Without even realising it, I've learnt a lot this semester. Whilst I have probably written some informal essays here and there (paragraph upon paragraphs in messages to friends), this was the first time I wrote nonfiction in a stream of consciousness style, in a very natural way. I think I did really well, from my roughest draft to my submission! I can see how Nicole Walker treats essays like an adventure, where you don't know what the next sentence is going to be, and what Lawrence Ypil says when he talks about finding "encounters" in an essay, how what it takes is you talking about something for a while before you figure out what you're truly saying. I kept writing and redrafting, searching for the true meaning as I went off in different directions or took parallel paths to reach a better understanding. I believe I also took Sam van Zweden's advice from Fiona Wright about pushing oneself to take risks, and exemplified Ali Cobby Eckermann's practice on writing softly and tenderly from the heart. With my peers' encouragement on the cute, tender and romantic moments in my anecdote, I decided to write as emotionally and as empathetically (is that a word?) as I could.