Process Assignment

Abby Calef

Dr. Heinritz

Food and Travel Seminar

20 November 2016

Process Assignment

I think one of the (many) most important things I learned in this class is the importance of honesty. People don’t want to read a perfect story with a perfect ending because it doesn’t feel real. No one believes a perfect story with a perfect ending because that’s not how life actually works. This has always been a challenge with me in terms of my writing, when I actually feel comfortable with people reading my writing, I want them to feel good while reading it. I always thought that everything had to resolve in order for this to happen. This has been a problem particularly in poetry. I always have thought that leaving readers with a positive feeling in the end was of the utmost importance, when in reality, the dissonance is what matters.

I initially noticed this problem’s recurrence in my memoir. I wrote a piece, about my childhood, during a really positive memory, happy, glowy memory that I have. A lot of time spent with my family was positive, especially at family dinners, when that was a time for all of us to be together. However, as this memory was positive, there was really no change in the “I” character. Through this class, I was encouraged to look at other aspects of my life that may have affected these memories, or somehow caused pain. Which was hard. I didn’t even really think I had those moments.

I think that what I’ve learned throughout this class is what made my writing in my “Perfect Meal” paper so raw. I realized that if I would have written about how perfect my meal was as opposed to how imperfect it actually was, I would have been lying. Lying to myself, and to all of you. My meal wasn’t perfect. In fact, I didn’t even want to have it. I didn’t want to sit down and eat a meal and try to be happy about it because I was sure that something had to make my meal somewhat perfect, that’s how it’s supposed to end… Right? I was initially planning on the experience going wonderfully; everyone throwing pasta at each other, giggling, singing songs, and getting undoubtedly messy. But that wasn’t the case. In fact, I dreaded the mere idea of even sitting down and eating with the people I had selected as my second family. I was in one of the lowest places I could have been in. If I would have told a story where I burnt the garlic bread, but we all bonded over how funny it was and sat down and ate with smiles on our faces, that would have been a lie. As much as I would have liked to have had a perfect meal, that wasn’t the case. Through this class, I truly learned that what makes a story perfect is how painfully real it is.

My revision process was also something that was different in comparison to what I expected it to be. Through workshops, I was so enlightened by the many directions in which my words could travel. It has improved my writing immensely. For my first memoir, I only saved myself enough time to revise for about two hours, as I had two other papers due that day at earlier times, also. I realized, through that revision process, that revising a paper is much more than grammatical errors. It takes an actual analysis and scrutinization of what needs to be enhanced and what is unnecessary. It seems silly that this has never occurred to me before, but, without the workshops, I wouldn’t have been shown what draws other people in. What draws myself into my work may, honestly, be much different than what draws other people into my work.

Similarly to what I have previously touched upon, this writing process has made me open up and write about pain, which has always been very difficult for me to do. I tend to casually forget painful moments; leaving them out of my writing seems to be part of my subconscious. But, it’s something I still need to continue to work on. Vulnerability is key.