Story ideas

So I have decided to stick with my original story idea. I am learning that writing a short story is not instinctual for me like research writing is, so I am going to rely on the peer review and the class workshops to make my story better. I have a basic idea of what I want to say, but I'm hoping the more I think about it, the better it gets.

I decided over break to stick with the idea I have been drafting, and stay away from some other topics that are closer to me because I am not ready to write about them yet. There are a couple writing territories that I could do well at, but they are too personal and I don't think it would come out how I would want.

I am sure I want to have a happy ending in my story, I am just working out how to make it interesting and dramatic without becoming too dark. Reading other short stories has definitely helped me think about where I want it to go. If I had to turn in my story now it would probably be disastrous, but I am hoping I will be able to work it and improve it in the next couple weeks.

the creative writing learning curve...

So I am finally starting to catch up on all my missed work. The past two weeks were a little rough, I had both strep throat and the flu back to back. Anyway, I am finally feeling better getting back into the swing of things.

I regret that I missed last week's class because this is a very new process to me. The writing assignments help though. I didn't really know all the prep work that went into developing a story before you actually start writing! I am so used to writing research papers where the formula is easy: research, thesis, outline, paper, and citations... To be honest I thought that creative writing was more of a trial and error process where you write a story and polish it as you think of new ideas and so on. I was unaware that there were so many writing exercised to help before the actual story writing begins. I admit it all makes sense now though. I was struggling in the first week to come up with a story topic that I could have written about and made interesting to others to read.

I have a lot more respect for this kind of writing and I am still hopefully that this class will enhance my writing skills and make it easier to write a stronger thesis paper when I get to my senior seminar class for history.

I still don't know exactly what I want to write my short story about though. I am trying my best to develop a story that I will enjoy writing. If I don't enjoy writing it then I know there is no way anyone else will enjoy reading it!