In middle school, I was given my first laptop and printer. The latter seemed odd to my bus friends. Why would a teenager want a printer for their birthday or Christmas? This made perfect sense to my parents. They had watched little Ashley sit down at the family computer and type up gibberish or print Hallmark invitations for her imaginary friends. I started writing in middle school. My imagination went from playing pretend to being written on the page. I was inspired by the Young Adult and dystopian novels of my time.  

My interest in creative writing was sparked early in elementary school. What interested me the most was not the facts I had difficulty with but using my imagination to take an idea or prompt and turn it into a story. From there, I was inspired by the books I read. In middle school, I became interested in spy schools, such as Ally Carter’s Gallagher Girl series. I also liked dystopian books like the Matched series, The Hunger Games, and the Divergent series, where teenagers rebel against their government because they are forced into their roles. However, I was young and had no idea about the plot because there was nothing to guide me. In the end, my stories never worked. They were just products of my imagination and the books I read. Even in the one intensive high school creative writing class I took, I struggled with my teacher’s guidance and scrutiny. However, I have always excelled at writing poetry, enough though I only dedicated my time to the genre in class. 

When I was younger, about my junior year of high school, I decided I wanted to be an author. Why not? I could write well; I enjoyed it. And like any other dreamer, I wanted my books to become movies. However, I realized that imagining such a big dream was a big mistake. So, I set my sights lower, just to get published. I studied the writing and publishing process to better understand where I was and how to adjust my writing to publishing standards.  

 My first year of college, I was undecided, but I wanted to pursue a degree in the liberal arts program. Aside from not knowing anything about the AFA in Creative Writing at Normandale Community College, I thought my writing wasn’t ready yet. It was my Introduction to Creative Writing professor, Tom Maltman, who told me I should join the Creative Writing program. I was delighted there was someone who could help point me in the right direction. Even if that meant, I wouldn’t reapply to the program and be accepted two years later. In the meantime, I spent a year completing my general courses, and figuring out what type of job I wanted after college. I ended up focusing briefly on zoology but gave up when I realized I couldn’t pass the required math courses. During my final year at Normandale, I dove back into the Creative Writing courses. In one of those courses, a classmate told me I would be a great editor. That’s why I hope to find myself in the publishing industry after I graduate from college, helping other writers refine their visions.  

While it is not required, a bachelor’s degree in English taught me about the different publishing roles. Copyediting was the first course I took that focused on the actual publishing side of writing. I was taught that editing is divided into different types, such as developmental, content, and copyeditor. Each focus on a specific area: structure, style, and sentences. The editor should break the project into smaller tasks to make the process easier to manage. With the requested editorial service, the editor will improve the overall picture, clarity and flow, or sentences of the project. The other publishing course I took was Publishing for Creative Writers. This course provides an overview of various careers in the publishing industry. Literary agents are the author’s first line of defense. They ensure that the books are ready for editing, find the right editor for you, and negotiate with the publishers about the books. I haven’t learned anything about being published yet.  

My undergraduate studies deepened my understanding and fascination with storytelling. During my studies, I acquired a knowledge of short stories, poetry, non-fiction, and screenwriting. In my first course, Introduction to Creative Writing, I studied everything from poetry to creative non-fiction. Much of the course’s poetry came from prompts for different types of poems and reading poems to learn about their techniques. As one does, I made progress. I remember submitting two well-crafted and popular poems to Normandale Community College’s literary magazine, Paper Lantern. However, they were rejected. It wasn’t until the next year that I took Professor Maltman’s advice and changed one of the poem’s forms to match the ballad of Poe’s “Annabel Lee.” For my creative non-fiction essay, I learned how to weave different topics into a larger theme to create a braided essay. Somehow it worked out, despite previous college writing courses where I lacked organization. 

After that came fiction and screenwriting, where I wrote flash fiction, a short story, and a short screenplay. Although I was proud of my flash fiction piece and short story, they didn’t have much plot or characterization beyond what I originally wrote. My personal development in writing came from the genre-specific courses afterward. I have to say that in the only poetry writing course I took; I had difficulty analyzing the craft of poetry. But I had no problems with writing poems. Fiction Writing, I realized that I worked best when someone gave me something to work with, like from my childhood, a prompt. I had much better stories than before that were more thought out, and I knew they could be expanded beyond their short form. However, I know that with a lot more time and work, they can get better. My first screenwriting course included a screenplay and a play and was the first time I worked in that format. You must think about which genres are best for the screen and which are best for the stage. This helps with the type of formatting you can work with. I was surprised at how easily I could adapt the formatting of the stories I had written but had to study examples and research what the script should look like. 

When I transferred to Southwest Minnesota State University (SMSU), I was happy to be at another school that valued its English Creative Writing program but was also surprised at how rigorous it was. During my first semester, I participated in a Writer’s Workshop where we wrote short stories, poems, and creative non-fiction. In addition to meeting like-minded people and better yet classmates, it was also a challenge for me to learn that a story is much more than just the plot, but also the characterization, the choices a character makes throughout the story and how they deal with them. Both of my poems turned out well. However, the creative non-fiction essay I wrote about my dad required a lot of work. I was not too surprised that my essay was sloppy since I had little experience reading creative non-fiction, especially essays, or writing them. So, it was a learning curve that I overcame in the Creative Non-fiction Workshop by learning about different types of essays, such as experience, personal narrative, reaction/response, and controversy. The examples helped me organize the content within. 

I was meant to take one of the advanced writing courses, either fiction or poetry. For me, it was the Advanced Poetry Workshop that I was looking forward to and was disappointed that it was canceled due to low enrollment. Instead, I took Copy Editing, which was just as exciting and even more challenging. I learned about the publishing industry from an editor’s viewpoint, and how to give detailed edits to clients. In my final semester, I am taking the Screenwriting Workshop online because everyone, including me, was enrolled asynchronously. I’m used to writing short stories, short essays, and ten-minute screenplays in class, so plotting out and writing a 120-page script has been daunting. There’s a time when I know I am underwriting what I imagined and the script doesn’t look like the way it should, but I’ve accepted that this is a first draft and, with feedback from classmates, there is room for improvement. It’s also a lot easier to divide script submissions into three acts rather than submitting as a whole script. In the future, I would recommend that students on this course make short films and not standard one-hour films. After delving deeply into my creative writing journey in school, we shift our focus to how I examine my own work and that of others to improve the quality of the content.  

I wasn’t always good at verbal feedback because I’m not good at being put on the spot, but by using the sandwich method, where I highlight the good and bad parts of one’s writing overall, I can tell writers what I think of their work. I’m your go-to person when seeking line-by-line edits, such as grammatical errors, and asking questions about terms and concepts that I don’t understand. I’m also a great cheerleader and will gush over parts of a story that I have an emotional connection with.  

I always had difficulty revising my writing because I couldn’t see “the forest for the trees” and therefore had no idea what needed to be fixed. That’s why I welcome feedback from other writers and readers. I have guidance and can figure out where in my stories readers are having trouble connecting with. In recent years, I have discovered reverse outlining, which involves outlining a book again after the first draft. This way, I can find places in my stories where I deviated from the outline and my vision. Oh, there’s a plot hole in this scene? Or a character who isn’t well-defined or whose goal is not clear on the page? This was the way I could refine my writing. But for my outlines to work, I need to understand writing techniques like character development and setting. My creative writing courses have helped me focus on and learn about these skills and more.  

Outside of Creative Writing courses, I was interested in the characters read in literature courses, such as American, Native American, women’s, British, Greek Mythology and Literature, and human diversity. I’ve become more aware of character development as it relates to the plot. It’s about how characters achieve their goals and how they grow over the novel. It’s also about how their view of the world around them changes or stays the same depending on what they encounter. At the end of a story, a character should move toward a major goal within mini-goals and hurdles that accompany each scene. These objectives don’t necessarily have to reflect the larger goal but should move the story forward.  

Growing up in the upper-middle-class suburbs of the cities, diversity was limited as more than half the families were like mine—white and well-off. The same was true for the school district I attended. Of course, I had friends who were from different ethnicities, but other than that, there wasn’t much difference between us. I got the most variety from the few books I read in K-12 English classes. Monster by Walter Dean Myers introduces a 16-year-old African American boy awaiting trial for murder and decides to narrate his time in prison through a screenplay. The book focused on themes such as racial discrimination, injustice, dehumanization of people caught in the justice system, and violence. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank focuses on Anne, a German-born Jewish girl who goes into hiding in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands and struggles with her identity. The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is an autographical graphic novel about Marjane’s life as a young Iranian girl during the Islamic Revolution. These were the books I remembered that didn’t focus on white Americans. I certainly hadn’t been exposed to too much more diverse literature until college. 

Many literary theories are concerned with what was going on in society at the time a particular story was written. An example is The Awakening by Kate Chopin, whose 19th-century novel focused on the characterization of self-expression in women when women were confined to the home and childcare to be stable. A woman who did have a husband to provide her a home or even children was reliant on her family, but outside of financial shelter, there is the inner self that yearns for independence. Here, the main character Edna wants to free herself from the constraints of home and look after the children she never wanted and the husband who is never there but has control over how she dictates her life. Compare it to Brit Bennett’s The Mothers, where feminist theory is still prevalent, but slightly modified. The main character Nadia also addresses what women have a right to, but in a more physical sense. Although Edna did not have access to abortion, it was prevalent among children and neglected because she was not there for her children, while Nadia had the option of aborting her fetus before it could grow into a living being. She knew it wouldn’t be wise to bring a child into the world when she was young, wanted to focus on making something of herself, and wasn’t sure where her relationship would lead. Overall, old, and new theories seem to mix in the way history repeats itself in different forms, from generation to generation. Even in fiction, one can read between the lines of history and find where they stand in society. Books that invite critical analysis to reward the reader’s efforts with a wealth of relevant themes and messages on important issues.  

However, the books that resonated with me were books like The Outsiders and the Harry Potter series, where friendship was a predominant theme. I was drawn to found family, where “blood is thicker than water” isn’t always the case. Sometimes blood relatives are the poison in our blood. Or our relation is missing from our lives, and to make up for the lack of closeness that family provides, we bond with our “found family” throughout life. I find this to be true in my life because I see it in the friends I made growing up. The ones I’ve grown close to don’t have the perfect family. There is a tear in their family tapestry, and through this relationship we have shared, we have bonded through the trauma. Although my immediate family is not broken, there are parts of my extended family that are. The Forestborn Duology by Elayne Audrey Becker focused on many relationships, friendships, romantic relations, and sibling bonds, all in a positive light. I also enjoyed how Elayne showed natural character emotions, especially through her male characters, allowing them to show more emotion than the stereotypical male characters, such as anger and pride. There are not enough genuine male characterizations of emotions in the literature. My friend Melissa Polk, who writes very queer books, focuses on LGBQT+ relationships, and how they impact society. Their first book, Beneath the Shadow Dark, a Western fantasy, focuses on a non-binary character, Jos, who has been shunned by society because of their identity. Jos adventures to another part of the world, where they find unbiased love and friendship. Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See is about two young adults on opposite sides of World War II, trying to survive in a war-torn Europe while serving their country. In the end, they come together to help each other out of the damage. It is like Joanna Hathaway’s Glass Alliance series, which is also about two young adults on opposite sides of war who come together despite everything.   

With that in mind, I didn’t get into literary fiction until college, which was hard for me. There were times when I could not concentrate because the characterization was too heavy, and I was missing the action in the plot. I found Anne Lamott’s memoir Bird by Bird inspiring because she used metaphors to discuss the writing process. She used the analogy of milking a cow to describe writing, saying it was like turning on a faucet to get the words flowing. Initially, the words may come slowly, but with continued use, the words will come faster and faster. Another writing book that I love is On Writing by Stephen King, which I have read three times for three different courses and enjoyed each time. I love how raw and honest Stephen is when he discusses his life and writing. It’s the “This is my life. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but I’m still here and alive. Take what you will from what I have to say, but I am not trying to change your perspective on life.”  

Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir by Deborah A. Miranda examines the colonization of Native Americans in California and offers insight into how to break the cycle of abuse. My family didn’t experience trauma of colonization, but I’ve heard about the generational abuse. I heard stories from my mother and grandfather about how my grandfather was abused as a child, the impact it had on my grandmother, how my mother witnessed it, and how my uncle continued the cycle of abuse. When she finished high school, my mother decided to distance herself from small towns and the problems that alcoholic men caused in their families. She decided if she were to raise a family; she needed someone with a kind heart who would not fall into bad habits, and if anyone ever did, she would be there to put her foot down. I think my mother’s upbringing toughened her.  

Other books I have learned a lot about during my academic career include Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, about finding oneself after loss; and The Odyssey, which is about how faithful Odysseus and Penelope were to each other after so many years apart. Recently, I loved Jimmy Santiago Baca’s book A Glass of Water, which is about working toward a better life. I enjoyed seeing the good side of people in an immigrant story. 

There were other writers and books that influenced my writing. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling has stuck with me since elementary school. Rowling’s ability to transform the ordinary into something magical fascinated me. I strive to give my own stories that have the same magic, whether they are magical or not. Other books include Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunter Chronicles and Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows duology. I recently read Joanna Hathaway’s Glass Alliance series and was fascinated by how she writes backwards. In the series, she takes a chapter from the last act of the last book and uses it as a prologue to the first book. Hathaway uses a prologue to introduce characters in all three books, but the first book foreshadows what will happen in the final book. By writing the ending first, you ensure that the main character achieves their goal without deviating from the plot. But including part of the end of the book in the beginning is unique. It means putting something tempting in front of you and leading the reader on—you cannot have that yet!  

I’d like to say that there are poets who have influenced how I write poetry, but I haven’t read much poetry except in school. From what I read so far, I have enjoyed Joy Harjo’s writing style in An American Sunrise, and Emily Dickinson. Most of my ideas and writing style come from finding poems on Pinterest and imitating their style with my ideas.  

I hope to gain a deeper understanding of creative writing techniques that can enhance the reading experience. Stephen King’s On Writing was great in helping me understand how to adapt an active voice by being more direct and using fewer words to convey what I mean. Additionally, in the book and in my copyediting course, I learned how to use possessives correctly, especially with words that end with in an ‘s.’ On a larger scale, I want to foreshadow, so that the reader keeps wondering what will happen next and establishes big reveals. Currently, I’m focused on creating a more character-driven story so that readers can connect more emotionally with my characters.  

My ambition as an editor after college is to work with writers who share the same passion as me for historical fiction and fantasy. I want to read books with unexpected adventures, magical realism, diverse relationships, historical settings, and multiple perspectives. It’s important to me to have characters that readers can identify with and help them find their own voice. Anything that makes me believe a character is worth fighting for. That’s what I want to work towards in my writing. This bachelor’s degree is my path toward this goal.