Whew. The three written assignments for this class have been difficult to say the least. Narrative journalism is hard. Good narrative journalism is harder! In my first two pieces, I really struggled with developing the "I" character. In my personal narrative, I had a hard time distancing myself from the story and making myself a credible, well-rounded narrator. I assumed too much. I definitely was writing it for the Narrative Journalism class and not for an audience that didn't know me. In my Profile on Laura, I had a hard time inserting myself into the story and showing our shared experiences. Out of the two pieces, I liked my "I" character better in the second piece, probably because the narrative wasn't focused on me.
When reporting for my Profiles on Laura and Jenn, I faced numerous problems. The main problem was the distance. We had to rely solely on Skype and phone conversations for the majority of the interviews. Though this worked better than I expected, I really would have loved to have visited Chicago and Schaumburg to collect data. As subjects, both Laura and Jenn were great. Both of them are very passionate people and just talk and talk. I found that if I just shut up and listen, I could get some really great stuff. My second main problem was with contacting sources. For the profile on Laura, all of Laura's friends that I wanted to interview (minus Salwa) were unreliable. Either they would not get back to me when I contacted them for interviews or they said really unsubstantial things. For the profile on Jenn, I desperately needed more sources and was unable to get what I wanted. Ron was unavailable every time I tried to contact him and was traveling with business for the last week. I think he would have really added a nice and necessary dimension to my profile on Jenn, even though he is "a man of few words." I'm really bummed I didn't get an interview with him.
For all three pieces, the workshops helped improve my narratives immensely. My classmates' comments were incredibly detailed and helpful. Hearing what exactly was lacking in my story, or seeing what dimensions just didn't work, was an integral part of the revision process. My peers gave me great suggestions on what else they wanted to know about Laura and Jenn and how exactly I could about addressing though things. They also gave very substantial suggestions for how to make my structure better and how to make my narrative flow. My only real qualm with the workshop groups is that they tended to be pretty much the same people every time we did workshop. There were three or four people I had workshops with every time and some people whose feedback I never got to hear. I would have liked the groups to have been mixed up a little bit more.
As a writer, I believe this course allowed me to experiment with an incredibly different style of writing. It forced me to combine everything I have learned about journalism with everything I know about creative writing (which isn't a whole lot since I've unfortunately never taken a creative writing course). I really enjoyed having more creative license. I think also since this class was more "doing" and less "teaching," I was forced to be more critical of my own work. While at times this could be frustrating and I would often wind up at Marin's office hours the day before a story was due, this class also pushed me to take more initiative and figure things out for myself. One thing I realized through this course is that narrative journalism takes a lot more time than good old hard-news journalism. I really had to get to know my subjects, spend time with them, and reflect on shared experiences to get the narratives that I wanted. While I think Laura's story definitely benefited from the time I put into it, I wish I had had more time for Jenn's story.
Overall, I believe this course was an integral part of my writing and learning process here at K. I think that I will be able to apply certain concepts to my SIP and will definitely be using what I've learned for coursework during my final year of college and beyond. Thanks for a great quarter!!
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