Extra Credit Blog

          Over the course of this semester we have had to do several different kinds of assignments. We have had to do poetry writings, reading assignments, fiction writing, writing exercises, and compiled multiple portfolios of our different works. Of all of these assignments that we have had to do, if I had to choose one that had a greater impact on me or my writing practices I would have to say it was the Fiction Portfolio assignment. The fiction portfolio was much more enjoyable to me when compared to the other forms of writing we did, and this is why I think I tried harder, sent more time, and overall, created a better final product in my fiction writing.
          This assignment helped me to expand the limits that I thought existed in my writing abilities. Writing poetry can be fun, however, there is only so much of it that I can take. I was never much of a poetry person. To me, poetry is best when it reads like music, however, not all see it this way. I found it difficult and tedious to write poetry eventually. As for the creative essays, I found it difficult to stay away from fiction writing as I wrote my essays. They should be creative, but not so farfetched that they border on fantasy. The line between the two was so thin that I just got frustrated. However, writing the fiction essays allowed me to use the parts of my imagination that I do not normally access. I learned that there are so many different paths you can take when writing fiction stories. There are limitless boundaries to what you can say or have your characters do or even what they can look like. They could do magical things or just ordinary things surrounded by a magical plot. Knowing that I had that much room to write helped me to get out of my shell and think outside the norms.
          This allowed me to broaden my horizons and take my writing to new heights. I feel like I did some of my best writing and expanded and improved on my rough drafts with the help of my fellow classmates and teacher. The most impactful part of writing fiction was that I could include a lot of my own person tastes in storytelling and I could incorporate my life events to make my writings both personally interesting, and interesting for others. I was able to place so much of myself in the fiction and still tell a story. I drew from other fiction that I enjoyed reading and I used writing techniques that I saw in their writings as well as the writings of those that we read in class.
          Overall, I feel that in writing the fiction portfolio, I wanted to create a better final product and that made me strive to write more in-depth and sophisticated work. This helped me learn ways in which I can improve my writings and ways in which I can learn to work off of other sources of inspiration. I think that it helped me to tap further into my creative side and use that to write papers that I was proud of. They were papers that I did not actually mind writing, and that can make all the difference. I am pleased with what I accomplished with the fiction portfolio because it was a compilation of my favorite stories that I wrote of my favorite genre, and I will try to use what I learned in that process when putting effort in to my future pieces of writing. This is the impact that the fiction portfolio had on me and my writing skills.