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Blog #8: The Last Blog

Inspiration : Ever since I discovered my love for writing during my freshman year spring intensive, I've wanted to dedicate a large chunk of time to the craft. Creating worlds and telling stories is something I've been passionate about for a long time, but finding the time to act on that passion has been difficult due to my extracurriculars. However, with the opportunity given to me during the three weeks of the project, I was able to realize my goal and explore my writing abilities to the fullest. Reflection : My final project, while it maintained the general ideas of my initial proposal, has definitely manifested itself differently than I intended. I initially had a larger focus on exploring the community with my writing, trying out different writing locations, and potentially meeting with various writers in the Cleveland area. However, as I began my writing, I found that I was most happy when I was creating the narrative and wanted to dedicate all the time I had to the writi...
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Blog #7: The Almost-Last Blog

At the time of the writing of this blog, it is Tuesday night. I spent today continuing my work on my novella and think I have an ending in mind. However, that ending will require additional time outside of my senior project and I will have to continue writing over the summer. While it is slightly disappointing that I won't have the bulk of my work finished come presentation day, I'll still be able to show off what I've completed thus far, which will amount to a sizeable amount of pages. I usually keep track of the word count of a story as I'm writing it, but because of the length of this novella, I've split it up into multiple google docs by chapter. Tallying the word-count is always something I enjoy doing for my stories and I'm excited to see what that number comes out to once I compile my story tomorrow. I tried writing in a new setting today, a local cafe close to my house. I found that I was productive during this time, which surprised me considering my obs...
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Blog #6: In Retrospect

 Entering the "beginning of the end" phase of my project, I can start to see my journey in its entirety. It hasn't been a grand or extravagant journey, but I've had a lot of fun writing over the past few weeks. My novella has reached a strange crossroads. I'm still not sure how much longer I want to make it and I can still see multiple routes for the story to take. There's still a possibility to end it or leave the project unfinished for now and take the draft I have into the summer months. I could even try both, though that may be a bit much. If I had to give the story a taskbar to represent its progress, I feel it's somewhere between 70 and 75% complete, but that number could be anywhere from 50% to 95%. It's hard to gauge the end of the story from a distance, as it could be much closer or further than I think.  I'm hoping to finish my project with 100 pages of stories, not for the sake of hitting a goal or quota, but I think 100 is a nice number...
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Blog #5: I'm Out of Witty Titles

 I've continued making good progress on my novella. At the time of this blog post, I've written around 60-ish pages in the novella and an additional 12 pages of short stories. I haven't written any new short stories since last week, but I'm super excited to continue working on the novella. I've finally reached the "meat" of the story and can start fleshing out the themes and big ideas I want to convey. It feels great to be fully invested in the story, too. I know that it's a project I will be able to see through until its completion, whether that happens within the duration of my senior project or during my own time. I'm still not sure how I want to end the story yet or how much longer I want to make it. I can see routes that work well for a shorter story and routes that would enable me to make it longer One of the fun things about writing fiction is that you end up learning about a lot of random topics. This has happened a lot during the writing o...
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Blog #4: End of the Second Week

 I feel good about my progress thus far, being the end of the second week. I met with Mr. Harris on Friday morning to discuss my progress and share what I had written so far. It was informative, but it was also more casual than I expected. We spent a lot of the meeting discussing literature in general and works relevant to my writing namely metafiction. It was a present surprise to me and it definitely gave me some ideas to continue my stories. I continued experimenting with writing at Hawken instead of my usual workspace at my house. I found that I was more productive than previously, which supports my hypothesis that the time at which I was writing (during the afternoon) was a probable cause for my lack of productivity. The genius bar still felt like a foreign workspace to me, though. It was like I was doing work in someone else's house. I didn't feel the same level of comfort and it was hard to eliminate all distractions. Admittedly, school is still in session and if anythin...
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Blog #3: A Change in Scenery

Progress has been steady thus far. In three days of work, I've been able to write over twenty pages of material, though most of it still needs to be proofread for content and clarity. I've been satisfied with the work I've produced, which is usually something I struggle with when writing fiction. Usually, I'll change a lot of what I produce from a past writing session, but I've found that writing is holding up better than I anticipated during this project.  I’ve discovered that many of my story ideas have been spontaneous and unpredictable, which has been a lot of fun. I’ll wake up in the morning and have a new idea for a story that, four hours later, I can have finished. Even if I have an idea of what I want to write about when I go to bed, that idea can completely change by the time I wake up, which is extremely interesting to me. That being said, I’m still able to stick to a single idea, as I haven’t lost interest in the longer story I’m working on. I’m not sure ...
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Blog #2: The First Day

Though I didn't realize it at the time, my first day of writing was very productive. I completed an entire chapter for my larger story and polished up some details from previous chapters. The new chapter was about seven pages in length and I'm happy with the detail it added to the story. I'm satisfied with the progress of my larger narrative and am excited to keep expanding on the world I've created. There are a few plot elements I need to work into the story to make it cohesive, mainly a backstory for my main character. I have a few ideas floating around but haven't decided on which to pursue. I have no doubts that I'll find the words sooner rather than later. Hopes/ Fears: A lot of my project hinged on my productivity, and I was happy to find I was having no trouble writing for extended periods of time. I did find myself feeling some fatigue towards the end of my sessions, so I experimented with taking breaks and found that they helped me get back on track. I ...
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