Reflection and Self-Evaluation

Dear Barbara,

I have always found it hard to start essays, narratives and even informal e-mails because I am too wary of the word choice, the flow and the organization of what I am writing. When I signed up for Contemporary Creative Non-fiction, I was convinced that I will learn how to write without straining myself that much but apparently I was flat wrong. Writing is more intimidating and slower than ever because now I pay attention to so many more variables: rhythm, sentence structure, blank space, repetition and what not have come into play. Now when I read and write, I both agonize and thrive. With a different eye, I look at what my peers and professionals have written, studying styles, concentrating on details, exploring new techniques, dissecting and analyzing to sift out the things that really work and eventually incorporate them into my own writing. For example, the way Jo Ann Beard plays with narrative distance in “In the Current” influenced my 100 words on “Lightning” and Moore’s “Self-Help” (yes, I checked it out) stories written in second person inspired the form of my final piece.

Of course, as a beginning writer, I could not possibly identify all the reasons why a particular piece of writing worked or did not work – this is exactly where class discussions, workshopping and blogging came in handy. Other people’s ideas helped me see things I would not have noticed on my own and provoked me to think in new ways. Criticism of my work was crucial – although I did not have a chance to go back and fix the flaws of my existing pieces, I knew what mistakes not to make in my future writings. I believe I gave back to the group as well. As a child, raised in a post-communist pseudo-democratic society, I never knew what it meant to voice my opinion and to have people who actually listen. This class gave me a stage to say what I wanted to say, and even though it was not much, I am excited that people actually felt inspired by some of my advice. In this course, I discovered the power of collective thinking and the effect that I, 1/17 of the class, have on what we all do. Becoming more confident in and outside of the classroom – this is my little (r)evolution.

As my ability to read critically and communicate my observations as a writer evolved; so did my writing skills. My first narratives were very broad and wishy-washy unable to convey the uniqueness of my subject matter (“Geo Milev” Mathematics School) but as the term progressed, my writing took a more focused and specific direction. I traded writing about too many things at once for concentrating on a moment. My pieces became more personal, descriptive and vivid, allowing the reader to live in this moment. Stranger Studies was a turning point in my writing style because it showed me the power of language. In as few words/sentences as possible, I sketched so much – appearance, motion and attitude. There I made a personal discovery – that I enjoy writing amusing illustrative short stories. This was further confirmed by the fun I had writing most of the 100-word stories, for which, along with constructive criticism I received many comments like “Hahaha”, “LOL” and “This is hilarious.”

While I am satisfied with my short narratives, I am not exceptionally happy with my braided essay, and I guess one of the reasons it did not turn out that well is the fact that I am a terribly slow writer. In addition, I was way too obsessed with figuring out how to make all of its disparate parts work together. In fact, I was so obsessed that I eventually overdid my essay – my transitions were great, very smooth and all but it was so partly because throughout the whole essay I was essentially talking about the same thing from different points in time (yes, my dear readers, I did a great job in boring you all with my little generic soap opera). Lesson learned: I can bring my essay to life and make it more dynamic by not being afraid to distance the individual topics of my braids.

I was just beginning to get the knack of writing, when we had to make things more complicated by complementing this ancient art with the contemporary image and sound. Again a lot of fun and struggle, especially because I had not used them before to aid me narrate. I spent a good amount of time toying around with the extremely simple-at-first-glance image-and-sentence-matching exercise because I wanted to make sure I could escape from the cliché and the obvious. The “dancing” class was fun too and made me ask myself how people would react if they hear the same melodies accompanied by lyrics. Maybe they would move differently influenced by the meaning of the words? (I for one would not change my reactions because I still have a hard time comprehending songs). All the knowledge I piled in about a week culminated in my unconventional multimedia piece, which people would either love or hate. I took chances with it by having too many black screens in the first part to correspond to my self-conscious state and by misleading the viewer at the end of the first part that my piece is over, leaving the character two-dimensional. The piece is by no means great but I tried stepping outside of my comfort zone and I am happy I did. Another concern about my multimedia is that at the end my images become way too literal, but given my narration, I could not come up with anything else. Maybe the narration needs to be fixed? Hmm, something to think about.

While I am still on the topic of experimenting and feeling uncertain as to how what I create is going to be received, I feel it is time for me to give an explanation (justification?) for my final project. As I already mentioned, I enjoyed Moore’s “How to become a writer” so much that I read with pleasure almost the entire “Self-Help” collection and under its influence I felt like writing about nothing else but “you”. I also knew I wanted to write about something funny because I seem to have a bit of talent to make people laugh. I remembered my coming to the States about a year and a half ago and all of the confusing yet comic situations I had because of cultural differences. Feeling that if I write about myself and my adventures in the USA, I probably would not tell much to my American readers and probably would not amuse them, I decided to reverse the roles: to have an American in Bulgaria. Now, some might accuse me that what I have written is fiction but I will remind them that my piece articulates what will happen to any American if they go to my country; it is exactly the opposite of what happened to me. No matter how I had written it, the main idea would have still been the same: that when you go to some place new, you have to be ready not to understand and to make a fool of yourself. However, in its present version, my final project is much more interesting, informative and amusing for the American reader.

In sum, I find most of my works far from perfect but I also realize that there is a lot of thought and potential in them. With each passing day, I can definitely see improvement in my creativity and my ability to articulate myself but there is still a lot to look forward to. I know that to many it might seem that I have not written much outside of what was required for the course but this does not mean I did not throw myself entirely into the craft of writing during this J-term. In fact, I give myself thumbs up for my effort because I spent a lot of time trying. While I suffered over every word of a single of my 100-word pieces, my peers probably wrote four of them, much more beautiful and intricate than mine. This does not make me feel bad at all for I am interested in the process and the lessons I learn from it. I will give myself a B+ for the great effort and not so great work. It is not so good, I know, but I will keep on fighting.

Thank you for this unconventional, mind-stretching J-term. I loved every bit of it!

Aneliya

“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” – Clifton Fadiman

Here is a short clarification of what I am doing in this piece: “…I feel it is time for me to give an explanation (justification?) for my final project. As I already mentioned, I enjoyed Moore’s “How to become a writer” so much that I read with pleasure almost the entire “Self-Help” collection and under its influence I felt like writing about nothing else but “you”. I also knew I wanted to write about something funny because I seem to have a bit of talent to make people laugh. I remembered my coming to the States about a year and a half ago and all of the confusing yet comic situations I had because of cultural differences. Feeling that if I write about myself and my adventures in the USA, I probably would not tell much to my American readers and probably would not amuse them, I decided to reverse the roles: to have an American in Bulgaria. Now, some might accuse me that what I have written is fiction but I will remind them that my piece articulates what will happen to any American if they go to my country; it is exactly the opposite of what happened to me. No matter how I had written it, the main idea would have still been the same: that when you go to some place new, you have to be ready not to understand and to make a fool of yourself. However, in its present version, my final project is much more interesting, informative and amusing for the American reader.” (taken from my reflection essay for this course)

Although your head is still buzzing from the humming sound of the tiny Boeing you arrived with, you decide you will go out after all. The nicely made bed in your hotel room calls you for an afternoon nap but heck, you are a tourist, you just arrived in Bulgaria and you want to start exploring right away. With a pronounced rumble, your empty stomach agrees with you. It is time for a refill, especially because while on the bumpy Bulgarian plane, you did not eat this plain sandwich that had only ham and cheese in it. No wonder why the flight attendants looked so malnourished. After a few minutes out in the Sofia streets, the buzz in your head vanishes completely, and you attribute this miracle to the relatively clean air and lack of too much noise, which you consider uncharacteristic of cities that have more than a million people. Three sidewalk holes away from you, you see the fancy entrance of a restaurant, the words above it big enough so that everyone (save for you) can read “Добре дошли!” (Welcome!). Enthusiastically, you jump over the gaping crater-like holes and go in.

While you stand stubbornly by the entrance expecting to be greeted and seated by a waiter, many people enter the restaurant and sit wherever they find fit. A young couple comfortably occupies a table for six, although you can spot at least two free tables for two. “What an unwise use of space”, you think slightly annoyed, then give up waiting and park yourself in a secluded corner by the window. Coated in a rubicund linen cover, the table has nothing but this cover on its surface. “They must eat with their hands”, you freak out; nevertheless, try to appear calm. To your relief the waitress brings utensils, napkins and an oily menu. As she leaves, you follow her with misty eyes, hopeful that she will come back with a glass of free water and a plate of free bread and butter but she never does. No sooner have you had a perfunctory glance at the first few pages of the menu than the waitress pops again by your side, ready to take your order. “I would like to have a shopska salad, a grilled pork steak with French fries, bread, Coke and wine, please.,” you say beamingly, emphasizing on “shopska”. Although you are 20, a legal drinking age in Bulgaria, the waitress still gives you a suspicious look when you say “wine”. It will be not until later that you will find out that having wine with your salad in Bulgaria is like having beer with your desert in the USA, and that in general, only people stuck somewhere in the 1950’s have wine with their main dish. In five minutes’ time, your exotic salad is served accompanied by a glass of exquisite wine and iceless Coke. You never receive a cloth to spread over your lap, so you line up napkins instead, four on each leg. Trying hard not to spill anything on your weakly protected lap, you enjoy the juicy salad whose unfamiliar yet exciting sour flavor tickles your tongue. When your sizzling, rich steak finally lands on your table, you totally forget about all the confusing situations from the past forty minutes. Chewing slowly, so as to fully revel in every bit of your new food experience, you come to realize that Bulgarian cuisine is your favorite…after American of course. As you meticulously clean your plate with your last pieces of bread, you ask for the bill. The waitress smiles at you for the first time after you generously leave a tip that is 15% from the bill. They almost never leave tips in restaurants in Bulgaria.

Satisfied, you walk out of the restaurant, your belly about to burst. By you pass girls sporting polka dot clothes. You notice these things – the hotel receptionist had a polka dot shirt too. “Outdated but cute”, you think and then try to occupy your mind with other thoughts. However, the polka dot monster follows you doggedly wherever you go; it lurks around every corner and pounces right onto your face. You start staring at every person to realize that people here are way too conscious of what they wear; dressing-up is a necessary part of daily life, an art that everyone must master. People look the same to you – model-like, polka-dotted. “There is no individualism”, you think, trying to defend your culture but then you admit how much nicer it is when colors and styles match and baggy, worn-out clothes are shunned like the plague. Feeling that you should follow the fad, you surrender weakly. You jump into the first taxicab you see, shouting enthusiastically “To the shopping area!”, excited to replace your one-colored tee with a fancy dotty shirt in an attempt to blend with the trendy crowd. Taking advantage of the fact that you are a helpless foreigner who does not know her way around the city, the driver takes the longest route to your final destination. Feeling tired, you would not have minded being seated for a longer period if it was not for the driver’s perpetual shouting through the window. You are blessed you do not know that he is yelling obscenities at the other drivers, trying to make a point how incompetent they are. By the time you reach the shopping area, you again have a buzz in your head, attributable not only to your boisterous driver but also to the fact that for this jerky drive (too many street holes) you have to pay three times as much as you paid for your succulent lunch. At least you do not need to tip.

In the shop, you feel like a closely watched participant in Big Brother: a shopping assistant with heavy make-up all over her face, follows all of your moves and every thirty seconds has a question to ask you or a statement to make. “What are you looking for?” ”You should try one of those shirts with lots of straps and beads – they will be the craze all throughout summer.” “What an intrusive missy!’ you whisper, accidentally dropping an item on the floor. In stores back home, you have dropped a lot of stuff – minimal underwear with laces, expensive designer purses, cheap summery skirts, and hip-hop hats but you never bothered to pick them up. No one watches there. Now under the piercing reprimanding gaze of the nosy shopping assistant, your face turns the color of a ripe tomato and you do what you thought you never would – you pick up the item and put it in its original place. A few minutes later, you regain your confidence and decide to try two shirts, polka-dotted of course. The shopping assistant considers it necessary to walk around you and rave about how gorgeous you look in the shirts, although you have eyes and clearly see that the first one perfectly outlines your bulging belly and the second one forms odd angles around your breasts. Having enough of the shopping assistant’s incessant chatter, you walk out of the shop with empty hands, leaving her frown at your rear.

On the way back to the hotel, you catch an overcrowded tram: it comes late, the ride is long, noisy and bumpy but at least you know you pay a cheap fixed price. No sooner have you unlocked your hotel room door, than you find your exhausted, tortured self prostrate on the bed wondering how you are going to stay sane in the coming two weeks.