As part of personal introductions on the first day of my Creative Writing course, we were asked to go around the classroom and say our names, majors, and why we chose to take the course. “I’m taking this class because it’s my senior year. I’ve spent three years writing for other people, and want to write for myself,” I said, with overwhelming excitement and ambition. Finally, I thought, I would get to write creatively, as I had loved throughout high school, years before. I was ready to show everyone what I could do.
Fast-forward to two weeks later, the night before my first fiction rough draft was due. I sat before a blinking cursor on a blank Word document. I couldn’t think of anything. Stressed and confused, I thought about how story ideas used to come so easily to me, and how I used to be able to write a compelling fiction piece about literally anything. I picked up the prompt again. “3,000-word fiction rough draft on the topic of your choice.” As a student who had grown accustomed to detailed prompts and strict requirements, I felt like I had been thrown into the ocean with no life ring, forced to swim on my own for the first time. After staring at the blank screen until 2 a.m., Googling “fiction story ideas,” and considering loosely copying the storyline of Good Will Hunting, I asked myself: Did college take away my creativity?
In attempt to answer this question, I need to go back to the beginning.
My Writing Evolution
I came into college a very confident writer—probably too confident. Throughout high school, writing assignments were simple for me, and I could put off my essays until the night before they were due and still get a near-perfect score. I thought I had it all down: throw together a catchy hook and introduction, body paragraphs 1, 2, and 3, a conclusion, and an EasyBib-generated bibliography to top it all off. My main goal when writing essays was to completely take a side, completely answer the question, and leave no room for inquiry. My confidence could have been a result of many things: the “good writer” label I was given throughout school, a genuine inclination toward writing itself, or—most likely—my ceaseless drive to get good grades at all costs.
Under the impression that I was a natural “good writer” and, thus, could receive nothing other than an A in an English course, I wrote my first college paper the night before it was due and turned it in without a second thought. Two weeks later, I got it back and all my instructor had written was, in glaring red pen at the bottom of the last page, “C.”
I had never gotten a C in my life. My world was crashing down before me. I wasn’t a good writer. I was a horrible writer. People had been lying to me all along. This was all a facade. What was real anymore? Was I in the Matrix?
After I had calmed down, I approached my second paper with meticulous structure and strategy. My instructor introduced me to the “so what” of an argument, prompting me utilize the conclusion as a way to address larger issues within the small topics to which we were assigned. Looking back now, I may have laid this “so what” factor on a little thick, as my conclusion attempted to connect Joan Didion’s stylistic choices to the overall conformity of mankind:
Instead of these desperate clichés and addressing “people” as an umbrella term for all of mankind, I might as well have just written “PLEASE GIVE ME AN A” and the conclusion would’ve had the same effect. I mean, come on, "If one wan'ts to see, one must not blindly follow." I sound like a fortune cookie. Though I think I was gradually able to more naturally address the larger implications of my arguments over time, this became mundane.
Maybe my instructor was trying to use that "Juilliard strategy," where they completely tear apart who you are so they can rebuild you in their own, improved image. But I felt like I was never rebuilt. After this course, I was still stuck in the five paragraph essay all over again, this time with the words “impact on society” thrown in at the end. Thus continued my journey of writing to fit an instructor’s expectations in hopes of a good grade.
The next semester, without any rhyme or reason, I registered for English 225: Academic Argumentation. Over the duration of the class, were to pick an arguable topic that we were “passionate” about, and write a 20-page research paper at the end as a culmination of our efforts. I sifted through what I thought were my passions and chose one that I thought would be the easiest to argue and, thus, would be most likely to get a good grade: the ethical implications of zoos. Though I’d like to say this experience opened my eyes to the power of the written word as a medium for change and advocacy in correlation with my own “passions,” it did not. Instead, I learned how to further auto-tune my voice into someone else, this time a stuffy, academic scholar whom I picture sitting in a well-furnished library with really high ceilings and wearing a burgundy robe smoking a pipe seamlessly whittled out of rare cedar wood. Here’s a line that perfectly exemplifies my desperate attempts to hide the fact that I was a college freshman who still misspelled the word “definitely” more than often:
I made everything so complicated. When I wrote “mankind’s fascination with the domestication of nonhuman species,” I really just meant to say that people like to take selfies with penguins at the zoo. Regardless of this attempt to be someone I clearly was not, it’s worth noting that this overly-academic voice received an A grade. It’s also worth noting that this voice likely led my professor to take me seriously, and for audiences to actually contemplate my argument. It was at this point in my life when I wondered: is this “academic voice” just one of the many social constructs that I’ll have to conform to if I want to be considered relevant, like wearing a suit to an interview and refraining from getting a dolphin face tattoo? I figured it was, and became best friends with Thesaurus.com in attempts to hide my lack of sophistication.
On a broader scale, this imitation serves as a good example of the sort of “imposter syndrome” I experienced in my first few years at the university. Plucked from my small high school and thrown into a sea of overachievers and fellow grade-grubbers, I was no longer “the best.” Though I was questioning my own identity as a writer, I attempted to mask this insecurity with big words, complicated sentences, and depressing conclusions that consistently tied back to societal collapse. I hoped nobody would catch on to the “real me” and realize that I was, dare I say, average.
In the fall of my sophomore year, I took Writing 300: Seminar in Peer Tutoring as a prerequisite to work as a consultant at the Sweetland Center for Writing. I came into this class without many expectations, assuming that I might learn a few grammar rules to better edit students’ papers and get them to mask their writing with a scholarly voice, just as I had.
Quickly, the Writing Center’s philosophy turned this perspective upside-down. Following Sweetland’s mission, I learned that writing is not a skill to be taught, but an inherent ability and medium for expressing thoughts, opinions, and emotions. I was challenged to ask why students tend to write in such a restricted format and voice. This resonated with me, as I realized that I had always written through someone else’s voice. While I was instructed how to teach other students to break the norm of traditional essay structures and question the myth of “Standard Written English,” I also used this lesson to challenge and change myself. I looked within myself and, for the first time, asked why I write. Suddenly, I was invited to take risks in my writing, and utilized a third-person point of view in my “Why I Write” essay that I would’ve previously considered forbidden:
This conclusion explains how, while I think writers should embrace unconventional ideas, you probably shouldn’t submit a graphic novel as a metaphor for the cell cycle for a biology course. I found balance throughout my writing center training; overt risk-taking and creative expression may not be appropriate for every assignment or genre, but that does not mean a writer needs to change who they are to fit a mold.
After contemplating writing’s role in my future, I decided to further explore the field of journalism. I took an Ethics in Journalism course through the Communications department, where I was taught that journalism is about “just the facts,” and that real stories should be devoid of emotion or opinion. I still wholeheartedly agree with this proposition; people need impartial sources they can trust to learn what’s going on in the world. But after a while I questioned: is this really writing? After putting together a few pieces for my journalism classes, I felt less like a writer and more like a programmer, inputting the data and facts into short paragraphs and, yet again, emulating someone else’s voice.
In hopes of balancing factual evidence with creativity, I chose to write a mock Op-Ed for The New York Times about the impact of digitization on journalism, and how the decline of print media may impact the ethics of news publications. After focusing on journalism for so long in my courses at that time, I was immersed in the topic. However, at the same time, this piece was a challenge for me, as I saw my writing become very fact-based and had to push myself to implement a personal voice or any ounce of creativity.
Still, though I struggled to speak my mind, this article reflected the newfound idea of inquiry that I took away from my peer tutoring course. Though I was tempted to come into this project with a clear conclusion (that journalism was dead, and it was all my generation’s fault), my interviews and research challenged that notion. I had previously seen opinion pieces as a genre that required a clear, distinct stance, standing on a soapbox and shutting down all potential opposition and resistance. Instead, I exposed the holes in my argument and formatted the piece as a quest to uncover answers, whatever they may be.
My tone became even more personal when I remediated this article into a podcast, where I had the opportunity to literally speak through my own voice. In this genre, authenticity became especially important; I didn’t want to sound like I was reading off a piece of paper and, as a result, wrote like I spoke, which translated into inquiry when it came to my underlying argument. Instead of making a dramatic claim in my conclusion, I presented my opinion while leaving the floor open for debate:
A couple of years earlier, I would’ve called this conclusion “wishy-washy” or “weak,” claiming that the closing sentence of “news isn’t dead, it’s just different,” is super boring and not sensational enough to be a strong argument. But, over time, I learned that my writing didn’t need to pretend to have all the answers. Personally, I wasn’t sure what the future held for the journalism industry, and it seemed like nobody else really did, either. By embracing the unforeseeable nature of the future in my piece, I created a stronger argument.
At this point, we come back to another pivotal point in my college writing career, my Creative Writing course. As I struggled to come up with original ideas and lost my crutch of detailed prompts and outlines, I was forced to think for myself as a fiction writer. I wouldn’t be graded according to a strict rubric, which scared me. After staring at the screen for hours, I resorted to finding an old file of a short fiction vignette I had written a year before and submitted that as my rough draft.
Leaving the classroom after in-class critiques, when all twenty students shared their thoughts on my draft, I was convinced that I was “out of creativity.” My instructor told me that my piece was cliché, and that it followed the storyline of pretty much every other struggling fiction writer. Other students in the class said that they had no idea what the point of the piece was, where it was going, or why I even wrote it in the first place. Broken, I couldn’t say I disagreed with them.
When revising my piece, I recognized this ironic twist of fate: for once, I was forced to write creatively to get a good grade. Everything had flipped, and I worried that I would fail a class that I had simply taken for fun. Creative writing wasn’t easy. And so I fought back.
I met with my professor to further evaluate what constituted a “cliché,” and took his feedback to heart. I read every single evaluation letter my classmates had written me and took notes on where to improve. I researched my topic to no end, from the setting to the characters’ professions to the types of dialogue used. I put in time and work for a class that I essentially thought would be a fun blow-off. I learned that creative writing came naturally to just about nobody, and that a good work of fiction had to be earned.
When I sat down to revise the final draft of my fiction piece, I asked myself; is this who I am? I completely erased entire pages of my draft and rewrote them in a way that took risks and spoke emotionally, as reflected in my favorite passage of the piece:
At the beginning of my Creative Writing course I thought that maybe, if I stopped trying so hard, the words would just “come to me,” as though they were automatically implanted within the minds of “good writers.” Eventually, I learned that nobody is inherently a “good writer,” and that good writing actually takes a lot of hard work, culminated in the form of horrible first drafts and harsh peer critiques. I became open to accepting feedback, motivated to revise, and willing to admit that my first drafts won't ever be perfect. (And final drafts probably won't, either. You just have to accept the imperfection and end it at some point.)
Looking back now, I wonder why I was trying to hide myself for three and a half years. It brings me back to that age-old question: is college about self-discovery or grades? I fell into the latter which, don’t get me wrong, I don’t completely regret. A lot of times, I felt like professors were yelling “BE UNIQUE!” but, at the same time, grading papers yelling “BE LIKE EVERYONE ELSE!” I wrote like someone else as a way to do what I had to, until I could do what I wanted to.
So when my Writing Minor Capstone course rolled around, I knew I wanted to make my project a reflection of myself. My actual self. Not an English scholar or a seasoned journalist. This is what led me into the zine genre, which is inherently rooted in rebellion, challenging norms, and embracing counterculture. In this way, I knew that my lasting impact as a college writer would showcase my authentic voice and, in effect, question the strict structures I had followed so many times before.
When I typed the first words of this project, I set out on a journey to define my own voice, which had somehow grown distant over the years. At first, though I like to think I’m a light-hearted, moderately-funny person, implementing humor in my writing was a challenge. I second-guessed each sentence of my introduction, worried that people wouldn’t get the jokes and think I was trying too hard. Then I realized: maybe I am trying too hard. The zines and comedy memoirs I had read and researched seemed like a conversation. They flowed naturally. They didn’t care what “the haters” would think. They were bold, brash, unafraid, and risky. They were exactly what I needed to be, to show who I really was as a writer.
And so, in an attempt to make my writing sound more like a conversation, I chose a topic I knew well (college) and talked with my peers to get perspectives on what would be funny to question and criticize. I literally held conversations with myself, where I recorded my voice as I went on a rant about the topics as naturally as possible. From these, I was able to pull direct sentences that I said out loud on-the-spot, such as the final lines of my conclusion:
There was no better way to write through my “real voice” than to literally vocalize my thoughts. In doing so, I didn’t filter myself. I didn’t overthink. I just spoke, and I just wrote. And though I still recognized the importance of audience, structure, and tone when editing the piece as a whole, I realized that great writing is messy, edgy, and real.
Throughout much of my college writing experience, I was scared to imagine and improvise, as I was littered with self-doubt. And after digging deep into the warped, confusing journey toward self-actualization that is “college” through my capstone project, I realized how much my writing evolution mimicked my personal journey to “find myself” over the last four years. As both a writer and a person, I doubted what others would think of me, questioned whether I belonged at this university, and felt that I was an under-qualified imposter surrounded by try-hards who came in with 27 AP credits and still bragged about their ACT scores.
What I’ve learned is that writing isn’t elitist. Everyone is a writer: stuffy scholars, edgy artists, and struggling college freshmen. As I became more comfortable in my own skin and embraced my skepticism of the artificiality around me, I found myself reflecting this authenticity in my writing. Finding my voice as a writer wasn’t about effortlessness, because I learned that creative writing was actually a ton of work. It wasn’t about forgetting my audience, because I realized that an important facet of writing is actually having someone to read it. And it wasn’t even about disregarding my grades, because, let’s be honest, grades are important. Finding my voice was about finding myself: questioning the norm, embracing imperfection, and exposing the fact that, in writing and life in general, nobody really knows exactly what’s going on. Some people are just really good at faking it.
Over the course of four years, I ended the facade. I came out and declared, “I am Allison, I am a writer, and I don’t have all the answers. Deal with it.”
“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
– Sylvia Plath
