I know without a doubt that I would not have approached an independent piece of writing from the perspectives I have explored my writing through this semester in class. Developing a piece based on eavesdropping, physical presence, interviewing, and then observation allowed me to step into different writerly roles and build a unique relationship with my subject. Because of these specified viewing techniques, my writing has been both pushed and limited by my perception of the expectations that came with ‘accomplishing’ these techniques.
When I approached the prompt for the first zine I completed, which focused on eavesdropping, I was just focused on getting it in and doing it ‘right’. I still am. I realize, however, that there is more to writing than just interpreting the prompt correctly. It felt impossible to manufacture a good story from a simple walk. The amount of the story-gathering process that was left up to chance frustrated me in the limited amount of free time I had to gather it, let alone transcribe and expand on it. I ended up zeroing in on a very small part of my night through a raccoon that crossed my path. My writing clearly reflected my distance from the work in the lack of intentional storytelling flow as my peers pointed out in our workshop. I totally agree with them.
Then, our class explored writing through physical presence, fixating on detail in multiple items. At this point in the semester, confronted with writers like Lydia Davis’s disjointed Varieties of Disturbance and Iain Reid’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things, my frazzled brain just couldn’t find congruence between any set of objects besides the way I felt about them. So instead, I fixated on a set of items I understood, by exploring my ADHD, forgetful nature, and generational inheritance of neglect. This prompted three very different writings, with three different senses of physicality and detail, both disjointed and incomplete. Almost like I forgot to finish it off. Well, I’m sure it’s one of those things that I’ll remember to get back to! Utilizing the details of a physical object gave me a chance to fixate on something that is in my control (or the fact that something is out of it.)
Finally, interviewing has been a very intriguing way to write and one I have not had experience with outside of this class. As my project shows, I took an almost reporter-like distance when it came to this project. I felt that to properly explore the story of my friend Kiki, giving her the stage to command entirely would only be fitting. I intentionally prosed any interjection in a neutral tone, as I wanted to give Kiki a magazine-cover superstar flare like she carries around with her daily. This process felt much more consensual than eavesdropping, and it felt much more satisfying because there was a sense of digging for a story. Kiki, more satisfyingly, comes to a much deeper conclusion during our conversation than the Raccoon, or a drunk bridesmaid ever would have. Even if they had, I’d only know a fraction of the story.
These different writing approaches allowed me to create diverse pieces of work that I would not have attempted if not for these pushes. While my perception of the 'right' way to approach these prompts sometimes limited my work, without these strategies my writing would have been much more limited by my singular approach.
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