UWP Reflection

Reflection
Natalia B. Simmons

Going into this program, my focus was on becoming a better teacher of writing, and I feel that I have accomplished that goal. I liked the idea that teachers of writing should be writers, but I didn’t see the necessity that was stressed to me at first. After participating in this program, I do think it is necessary, and I think I have grown as a writer through this class.

Part One: Thinking and Writing
Part Two: Process of Revision

I combined these two parts because it is easier for me to discuss a piece as having a life, and since the writing process embodies all thinking, writing, and revising, it seems redundant to split them into separate parts.

As a prose reader (mostly fiction), my writing has always been in that focus, and that is where I feel the most comfortable. However, I have worked with several poems over the course of the last several weeks that have been enlightening for me. The poem I chose to post as my poetry piece was ignited on our field trip to the South Carolina Botanical Gardens. My husband and I used to spend a lot of time there during college at Clemson, but we haven’t been there in years. Walking the paths and visiting our old places brought back a strong memory of learning whitewater dynamics on a “model” scale by floating foam kayaks through the little creeks in the garden. Jonathan was the expert, and he would explain all the nuances to me then. Since, we’ve grown up; I’m as apt on the river as him now, and our trips to the garden are no longer necessary to spend time together.

The poem began as a prose rant at our morning journaling session. I just jotted out the memory and how I have seen our relationship change in the past few years. Then, I took that prose and lined it into more of a structure of lines and stanzas. Thinking of Ron Rash’s advice and the simplicity and concision of Sandburg’s poetry, I felt bogged down in the completeness of the sentences that made up the poem in the first posted draft. I went through and removed everything I felt was unnecessary to the overall message of the poem and that became my final draft. I am pleased with the final outcome, and I doubt I will revise it further.

I intended for the open piece to be a short story I have been working on for a while, but then the blue dress came into my life with a force I could not ignore. Our downtown walk led me to a vintage clothing store, and I could just feel the history in the clothes there. I perused the racks and ran across this polyester, baby blue dress. I tried it on, mostly for fun, but I was taken away by an idea that a woman had owned this dress at some point. She had walked into a store and bought it brand new, and I wondered how it made her feel. I sat down and drafted out a very rough, sporadic idea of what the woman was and what the dress did for her. Then I thought about how it was affecting me, especially in light of what I imagined as its history. Where would I wear it? In light of the liberation theme I was following with it, I remembered a wedding that is coming up and how the newly wed bride would change as her marriage settles down. I think this poem catalogues how all women feel once their marriages fall into the daily routine that becomes a bit mundane. The subject matter of the poem is a little racy, and my mother responded that perhaps I should analyze my own life for why I would write a poem such as this. I went out of my comfort zone to create a poem with somewhat erotic themes and tones, but I don’t think the poem would have been so engaging without that included.

I posted a draft on the E-Anthology that wasn’t exactly the first draft, but the first polished draft. Wendy Warren responded that the beginning of the poem was not as engaging as the last stanzas, and, on her advice, I revised the poem by rearranging the stanzas a little to make the speaker the center of attention. Rebecca Kaminski also responded that she liked the poem but wondered more about the woman from the past. I considered adding a stanza about her, but I didn’t. I wanted the speaker to remain the focus and the woman to be more of a mystery since the history of the dress was a mystery to the speaker. I think rearranging the stanzas took care of that, though. After such an eye-opening experience in that dressing room, of course I bought the dress, and a picture of it is viewable on my blog page.

Like Ron Rash explained to us, an image sparked the idea for the fiction piece. Laurie McCall’s teaching demonstration included a picture (viewable in part on my blog page) of a young man and woman on a city street at night, separated by a few feet. The man holds a guitar, but doesn’t play, and the woman is just looking at him. I felt tension between them when I looked at the picture, and I wanted to know why. I also wondered why he wasn’t playing the guitar, but why weren’t they talking? What had gone on between these two people that made them so distant? I started out with a generic third person situation that explained some of these questions. Working from a character analysis I had been developing, I made the woman into someone who is smart and in control but has deep insecurities. I didn’t know what to do with the man, but, working from the personality of a musician friend, I roughly worked him out in the image I had of someone who is talented and focused on music as his first priority. At the end of that first draft, I determined that they had been in a relationship, but it had ended because the woman could not get comfortable with the man’s natural reticence and focus on the music.

I knew the first draft was vague, so I sent it out onto the E-Anthology for comments. Vicki Moriarty suggested that I develop the characters more, so I went back into the male’s character and tried to show an explanation of how deeply he is affected by his music. I used a character development journaling session led by Kris Turner to work his character out a little more. Women come and go in his life in a steady stream, and he sees them as a necessary evil. He’s confident and talented, and he manipulates his emotions in order to create, no matter how genuine those emotions really are. This led to the creation itself: the music. Why was he just standing there instead of playing the guitar? This led to more questions that needed answers. Why did he want to hide it from her? What could he do to get rid of her? How did he really feel? I used this character analysis to work out these answers.

Now that I feel this scene is fairly complete, it sits out there alone, and I think as I look at it that the character I want to follow out of it is the woman, perhaps because I identify with her more. The man, to me, is fairly summed up. He is set in this life, and he’s fairly flat. She has changes she needs to experience, and he’s been an experience that will help her become a stronger and more confident person. One day this little scene will be part of a short story or a novel, but, as it is, I am pleased with it. I will revise it as necessary for what ever it becomes.

Originally, my professional piece was the conference proposal for SCCTE. I revised the abstract I wrote for UWP by explaining the demonstration in more detail. Although I am pleased with the piece for the proposal, I wanted to discuss my demonstration’s strategy on a more professional level. After the journaling session on Tuesday with Dawn Hawkins, I decided to write more of an article like Jaime Lovello’s that would integrate all my work into a more comprehensive piece. To do this, I split the article into sections based on the research I used in my demonstration and explained the rationale for my classroom practices based on that research. I used the template from Rebecca Kaminski’s journal session to set up the problem I had in my class, the hypothesis I created along with the strategy, and the process I used to test it. I also explained the conclusions I drew from the completion of the strategy and ways it could be extended in my language arts classroom, as well as in other content areas. I hope to publish this article for high school teachers in a professional journal. I will revise it further as I continue to use the strategy, revise and present my demonstration, and adapt the strategy to other activities.

Part Three: Learning From Classmates

Through the first part of this reflection, I have addressed the community of writers and how they have helped me in many ways. Laurie’s demonstration gave me a great image for my fiction piece. Dawn’s and Rebecca’s journaling sessions helped me create a professional article, and Kris’s journaling session on character development helped me revise the fiction piece to add more depth to Tyler. I have also really enjoyed reading everyone’s work. Angela Kiker’s “Flatulents” made me literally laugh out loud, and Cathy Alden’s “Scream” let me know I am not alone in writing (ahem) “freedom” literature. Laurie McCall’s “Brothers” reminded me of my own brothers and how true and deep the love of family is. Reading her version of it after hearing her tell us this same story on our ride to class was interesting too; Laurie’s voice in her writing is as real and genuine as her regular voice.

In both our large group settings and our smaller writing groups, I have been amazed and encouraged by the support and the tight community we have built so quickly. At first, we were all so timid to share what we’d written, and now we openly discuss not only what we’ve written, but also the other things going on in our lives. We’re all waiting for Angela’s baby and worried about Jaime’s back pain and wondering how Monica is doing. We learned a lot about writing from one another, but I also think we learned a lot about life and how different people experience it. This has truly been an enlightening and enjoyable experience for me.