Creative Nonfiction Genre Proposal

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In my creative nonfiction genre proposal, I stated that, “my [creative writing project's] focus will be literary essays that address humanity’s universal desire for a sense of identity and belonging; these essays will be written from a personal perspective, containing anecdotes, internal conflicts, and external opinions” (1). Nearly ten weeks later, I believe I have achieved this goal in my final draft because of the stylistic approaches and revisions I made with the help of the Creative Writing Seminar’s workshops. My final draft for the project consists of eight essays that address several different events from my life, each revolving around the theme of identity and other aspects that help make up one's self. I discuss various subjects ranging …show more content…

This posed a problem; as I tried step back and observe my experiences, I also developed a distant narrative voice, which hindered my readers from truly grasping the true emotional weight of each essay. I found it difficult to eliminate this distant narrative voice in a few of my essays. "How It Feels to Be Adopted Me" and "On Being a Loner" were my two most personal essays out of this collection. For the subsection “A Ripped Out Prologue,” Dr. Mattix and my classmates’ feedback and questions greatly helped me to figure out exactly what I wanted to convey. Dr. Mattix and my classmates wondered why it was such a big deal and pointed out that I had always known about being adopted. After taking his queries into consideration, I was able to clarify my argument by changing different metaphors and adding more context. I deleted the Nobel Peace Prize metaphor and replaced it with a fairy tale comparison. I expanded on both my Farm Fresh and Public Speaking experiences. Finally, I added the telethon scene to further clarify my essay’s …show more content…

I knew the facts about this event in my life, yet I had never allowed myself to delve into my emotions about the matter. As I discovered more and more feelings about my mother distancing herself from me, I was able to incorporate more showing into the essay and allow the story to be told more organically. Overall, I had to take two steps in order to get rid of my distant narrative voice. First, I had to figure out how I actually felt about my experiences. Second, I had to convey those feelings in a clear manner, which entailed using showing, dialogue, and

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