Analysis of Work - from Scattered Prose to Plot

It's always a good idea to take a step back every once in a while to see how things are going.  To take inventory.  And that's what I've been asked to do for this course.

Originally I decided to register to take yet another creative writing course because I wanted a reason to write.  Motivation.  Also in the back of my mind is always the hope in finding a mentor. 

The first assignment was to write a poem.  I scribbled out an angst filled poem on my troubles with writing a poem while still sitting in the parking lot at CCCC.  It worked, I was writing.  Those were the days when the weather was beachy.  I took my notebook to the beach and wrote.  My poem was less like a poem - more scattered prose.

Next, the short short story.  This proved to be problematic because I had highly developed characters, symbols, and whatnot, but no plot.

Then the short drama, the one act play, that came on savant-style and left me with nothing left to say.

Assignment number four was creative nonfiction - to write a feature article, which I feel is good, yet far from really being finished.

After the feature came the query letter, in which I pitched my feature to an editor, but never sent because it (the feature) is so far from perfect.  This seems to be a theme with me - a struggle with perfection when in reality I am so far from it.  I mean, I know -"Nobody's perfect."  But...

That same week I reviewed the Gotham Writers' Workshop Writing Fiction book and turned in a hard copy of that, as well as recommending it to the class with a few reasons why.

The final project was the most broad.  It was to write 3,000-5,000 words.  It could have been a collection of poems, a story, a drama, you name it.  I turned in a plot treatment.  It was an expansion on the short short story from earlier in the semester.  But still I struggled with plot.  I began writing scenes without knowing how they might fit together, only that they did, or would, somehow.  I flushed out the characters.  Developed theme, symbols, that sort of thing.  It's a great start that needs to be given the chance to grow.

Then I focused on the final journal entries.  Some, just accounts of the mishaps of my days.  Others, ideas that I was planting.  And others still, responses to the GWW book.  All writing.  All assisting me in my goal to write.  I guess most of my writing is to see what I need to be writing. 

For me the horizon is overwhelming, just give me my little plot of land and I'll figure out what to do next, but give me the world?  Oh, no.  There's only so much land one can till.  It's hard work.  Slow going.  But plot by plot, I'll figure it out.