Final REFLECTION
What has changed now in regards to when I first did my proposal?
My original goal was to practise concision with my words. I used a lot of unnecessary words in my writing that I wanted to completely avoid altogether and I wanted to learn some way on how to deliver my points without ‘waffling’ on and on. I think I achieved that quite a bit with this project with help from my friend who’s currently doing a creative writing masters at Massey University. From her advice, I tend to use passive voice a lot and she pointed out words that are unnecessary in my writing but I’ve developed a habit of including. Researching more on that, I gathered resources online on how to help and found out a lot more as shown in my mid-brief reflection. Through this, I managed to find some concision in my writing, and I also learned how to cut out sentences as well.
Despite my original goal, I learned a lot more from this project than I realized and intended. These things vary from prompt to prompt which I will explain further down. However, from this, I’ve built upon my knowledge on both concision and what actually fits concision. I’ve also learned to appreciate the use of drabbles and the word restrictions imposed upon writers and sometimes pieces of work. After all, there are ways someone can ‘waffle’ on in something and knowing how to narrow it down is useful because it effects and actually maximises the delivery of impact on a reader.
So while I didn’t quite expect the changes in my proposal, I believe they were necessary to further my learning in drabble writing and concision, as well as other areas I decided to dabble in, such as the prompts I gave myself.
What was easy?
I believe reaching the word count was easier than I thought it would be. Writing them out was easy as well and I thought it was fun, too. The proposal and the reflections were easy to discuss and find a secure footing in, since it’s natural for me to be very critical about my own work.
What was hard?
There were surprisingly quite a few things that were harder for me than I thought there were. Some things were expected like finding the right way to cull words to meet the word count and figuring out which lines were better to keep than others. I sometimes had trouble with finding a good way to structure some of them as well. Another expected thing was actually coming up with an idea to fit the prompt in the first place, especially when the majority of ideas that I came up with were far too big for the intended word count and I wasn’t entirely sure how to shorten them down to fit.
On the other hand, an unexpected thing I came across was while writing the piece itself. Generally I like use a singular sentence to emphasise something or deliver some sort of impact so it comes easily to me. However, with drabbles, I found it hard to settle with specific words, especially when the only time I edited the singular, standalone sentences was when I was trying to meet the word count. I kept rearranging my sentence to try to fit both my idea and the word limit which took longer than expected.
What have I learned with the prompts given?
While I was writing the drabbles for weeks one and five, it reinforced the abstract idea of emotions by showing me how influential they still are despite being something that we can’t quite grasp physically. As I mention in the small reflections with the drabbles in those weeks, I learned that the emotions can really changed the tone and style of writing that they come with. Not only that, they influenced me to a certain extent on how well I could produce the writing itself. For example, the anger was run-on and unhinged. I produced that within at least ten minutes or so. The depression-based drabble, however, took me quite a while. The feeling in the drabble demotivated me because of the nature of the emotion itself and that was something that took me by surprise and made me realize that the mood of the piece is very much dependent on the feeling of the writer and how well they can relate to what they’re writing themselves. However, it’s not as if this is conclusive: of course, writers can write things based on something they cannot relate to at all. Things like magic and dragons and having a lover possessed, maybe, but I think the base feeling is what they always concentrate the most. They feel what the character is feeling at the moment. Even if they cannot relate to the situation, they can relate to the emotion, and that, in my opinion, is what drives someone when writing. Or, at least, it definitely influences me when producing a piece.
Another important thing I learned was that, depending on the prompt, there may have be context readers must draw from while reading the drabble. This happened with the series of events and dialogue-driven prompts, especially since I was trying hard to figure out what I could write in the first concept of the drabble based on those prompts. However, with the second drabble based on them, I think that while context may be desired in order for the drabble to make sense, I also think there’s a way to make it so that it can just be standalone. I’d have to wait for other comments to appear on week six and eight’s drabbles to be sure about it, though, since I did have a particular context in mind while writing them whereas readers may not.
Where do I go from here?
It’s a matter of practising this concision in each of my works, not just when I want or need to stick to a specific word count. With drabble writing, I’ve learned that I need to compact my idea so that it can still remain within the compounds of the restriction I’ve imposed and, at the same time, find some way to deliver both impact and development. I think it’s somewhat successful given how I’ve structured some of them, especially on the second half of the weeks. I also want to apply the same concision editing methods to larger works. I also want to play around with more prompts just to see what I can produce and, from there, I can hopefully only get better.