In World Literature, students were tasked with writing a book. For the project, I made a blueprint for what I wanted the book to look like and recorded every step I took to make the plan come to fruition. This project taught me about the intricacies of writing. I learned how to convey my ideas, evoke imagery, and write dialogue to enthrall my audience’s attention. Although possibly unintended, this project taught me patience. I kept having to go back and read over my work to make sure it was coherent, but also interesting. I had to do a lot of rewriting and adding of small details and that helped me learn the art of endurance in your craft. Even though I did not finish the book, I am still proud of what I made. Depicted above is the final book cover that I commissioned another student to make for my novel.

...At the Midpoint...

This is me discussing my feelings towards the book midway through writing it, I also provide a brief summary of my book accompanied by bullet points of major articles of interest at the start of the book. 

1. Brief summary of your book

Flake’s Tail starts off with a man who is an average dude, living an average life, with an average job, an average look, an average personality, and with nothing special about him at all.

• Sad life: Searching for excitement; not getting up to get it because of his lack of motivation

• Wakes up in a strange prison cell and is confused about what happened

• The man is ready to let himself go back to sleep and die in the cell alone because he thinks he will not be leaving anything behind in the world. He thinks that his being gone from the world will not affect it much at all.

• Once he closes his eyes hears a cry for help. At first, he’s skeptical of it just being his imagination– he hears it again.

• Gets the idea that this is his chance to have a life reset and have excitement in his life

• Manages to get out of the cell to help the person

• Finds out there are a lot more people trapped

• Unknown entities following the group around trying to stop them from escaping

• Leading the group through the labyrinth filled with strange things

2. How the process has worked for you

The process is hard to follow because there’s one point in the week where you know everything you want to write and your mind is flowing with ideas, then there’s a time where you have all the time, but you have no idea what to write down for the specific chapter. You would think 5 pages a week would be easy, but not many people— definitely not me —knew what to fill those 5 pages with every week. There’s also the fact that you are getting all of these other mini-projects and assignments from other teachers whilst you are writing your first book and it is just a bad combination. This does not mean I don’t like writing, but I feel like we could have been given more freedom to actually write. If you prioritize writing then all of your other grades go down. If you prioritize your other classes which you were already struggling to turn in all assignments, then you don’t have enough pages or your writing isn’t as good as it would be if you took your time and weren’t rushing.

3. How are you understanding the literary terms

While writing my book, I don’t typically have any problems with literary terms. I feel like I add a lot of color to my writing to make it more interesting and immersed. Sometimes I have trouble trying to figure out what to write in terms of being expansive and giving imagery, setting the mood, etc.

4. How does it feel to be halfway through

Now that we’re halfway through, the feeling is bittersweet. I love writing the book, but knowing I am almost done is a weight lifted off of my shoulders. I don’t have to worry about getting pages in on time while also juggling all of the assignments of my other classes, but it was definitely a great outlet for my creativity.

5. How do you feel about the project at this point? 

I am ready to work diligently on this project.