What is success? Success is an accomplishment that one has achieved in his/her own mind. Success is sometimes measured by the amount of victorious wins set by an individual. Or success could be the breaking someone else’s’ standing record.
A piece of creative writing is successful if you have an audience that is enjoying it. That audience can consist of just the individual author or a cast of a thousand. The audience would be someone who understands, relates, shares or is compelled by the vision in your writing.
I was once told by an instructor, that one should always write to address but not write to impress. Now even though I love this line, it will be a little hard for me to accomplish the task successful creative writing. The reason may be that some success comes in the form of entertainment. There are some times that writers want to draw their audience in by being witty, shocking, controversial and suspenseful. Even in times of complete truthfulness the ultimate goal is to keep their audience engaged. But by willing choosing this method, we in theory are writing to impress!
My hope is to have a novel written by the fall of 2011. My plan is ultimately find my comfort zone to have my instructor and classmates read my writing. This will be a huge task to accomplish and easier said than done. I write a lot but my writing is only viewed, judged and criticized by the author himself.
I wrote a total of four versions of this assignment and chose (in my opinion) the weakest to post on the blog. Why? In my writing, I usually over think the process and when I have to share, the overall product suffers. My plan for success in creative writing will depend on my growth in the course. That growth will develop by the way the class is set up. The class is currently assigned to peer response groups in class. That will allow me to share openly with others my writing as well as listen to the criticism of others of that writing.
Craig Joseph Fontenot
Craig -
ReplyDeleteInteresting stuff here. Your first paragraph above raises some questions for me in terms of the ways in which we measure success in writing, specifically. If I believe a story I've written is successful, then it is? What about if others read it and don't understand or like it? What about highly "successful" books in terms of sales that the critics (and some regular readers) still just think is awful? Some things to consider!
I applaud your writing plans, and I hope this class will help shape both your writing and your long-term successes.
- Jessica
It is good to have a goal for your writing, mentioned that you want to have a novel written by fall of next year. I do hope you are able to reach it.
ReplyDelete-Phillip Cobey