Introduction           

           Looking back at my experience that I have endured during my time taking the 39 A-B-C series, I can say that I am proud of what I have accomplished through out the year. In the beginning of the year I believed that if you were a good writer your first draft should be done very eloquently and only needs minor details changed before you turn it in as your final draft. Just the way that Frida Kahlo is able to make masterpieces with a stroke of passion. But what I blocked myself from realizing is how Frida stayed hours in bed just practicing these paintings and how many of these pieces had been sketched out millions of times before it was even presented for anyone to see. I failed to see the beauty of the process that I very much enjoy in my art practice. Through the 39 series I learned to enjoy the process in writing as well. One of the most important topics I learned in the series is to trust and learn through the process because sometimes our mind just can’t make a masterpiece in one sitting. One has to first  make it into a reality and allow yourself to see it from different perspectives in order for it to make sense in its new environment. As you can see below I have learned to trust the process in my painting where I ended up enjoying how I can make a 1 min sketch turn into a 4 hour color pencil drawing. I have now learned how to be equally satisfied with my 5 min writing exercises that have turned into 10 page papers. 

Narrowing your Way Out of A Creative Block 

         Creative blocks are the nightmare to any creative person and I am one who has dealt with many blocks including one in the beginning of the quarter. I was stuck on what I wanted to write about. I felt so discombobulated because I didn’t know what to write about, there were so many choices and so little time to go over making one board topic fit into a 10 page paper. One of the recommendations that really helped me was when we did a workshop in class about narrowing down our topic. Even If there is so much we can talk about in board topics, it is much easier to narrow it down to a topic that can be elaborated in efficiently in the time and page constraint. This reminded me of when I paint, sometimes I just don’t know what to paint. But by just doing a brainstorming ideas and then narrowing down the theme that I want to focus on usually becomes my concentration (theme of a series of works). Which is why in the beginning the Historical Conversation Project process my problem was that my topic was too broad. To elaborate, my topic was about how racism and stereotypes are toxic element within video games but there was so much that this topic can cover that I had no idea how to make it work. But in class going through the workshop, I saw how Professor Shane described how when topics are too board they should be deconstructed to find key elements that we actually wanted to focus on. So, as you see below I decided to go back to my 3 top topics I had initially brainstormed and highlighted all the key elements that I wanted to focus on and scraped everything else that was in the topics. My key topics that I wanted to elaborate with my project was stereotypes within video games, the discrimination that is implied within video games and the realistic social environment that video games have developed. After I deconstructed my topics, I looked up all the key elements up and I found that the way my key elements intersected were in the narrow topic of how sexual harassment affects womxn in the social environment of video games. As you see in the image below this topic turned into my HCP Prospectus and I highlighted the elements that again were the key elements I wanted to focus on within my HCP.

Allowing myself to deconstruct my topic and turn it into the a new one made a difference in the concentration that my essay was going to demonstrate. If I had stayed with my old topic I wasn't going to be able to focus on the key elements and I would have too many broad terms and analysis. But, since I allowed myself to deconstruct and make a new topic I was able to condense my analysis make more elaborate connections within the elements I wanted to bring across within my HCP. My structure was more condensed and helped my reader understand exactly what my was topic was and be able to see a deeper analysis within the topic than if I would have presented my broad topic.

Pitching your Idea to Someone in Order to Find your Structure 

           Once I understood how to narrow my topic I knew I was struggling with something else, structure. Due to the lack of time I was not able to work on my HCP's structure as much as I wanted to, so I knew it had to emphasize that struggle more within my Advocacy Project. It was important for me to work on this because not being able to create a structure in where my audience can follow my argument and my potential solutions doesn't allow my audience understand why I am putting certain ideas or solutions on paper rather than others. Whenever I am passionate about something I just am too provoked to actually figure out that my audience wants to know why I am provoked and that leads to not allowing them to understand my reasoning to my project. This problem roots from the fact that I am an expert on writing shitty first drafts and drawing silly sketches in my notebook. My shitty rough draft usually are just pieces of writing where I just write down all my thoughts on the topic without thinking about grammar, structure or anything. I soon came to realize that my shitty rough drafts are not a bad thing rather a good start but what I struggled in was how to structure my thoughts in order for them to make sense to other people. Something that really helped me with this was going to office hours. For an example, in one of my office hours sessions I spent on elaborating and trying to find a way to explain my solutions of my Advocacy Project to Professor Shane and it helped me understand how my solutions make sense to my historical problem. For in that moment I had the right examples for my solutions but they had nothing connecting them to actually make an argument on how those solutions were better than the ones that are currently implemented in video games today. What Professor Shane and I basically did that day in office hours as you can see below was to pick on my brain on why I thought my video games solutions made better ones than the ones currently implemented.

What we brought out to the light is how these solutions allowed the player to explore a points of view. Other items that I tended to highlight through our conversation was retention, proactivity, and social interactivity that are also written down in the image above. This helped me develop the main arguments that helped me structure my essay in a comparative structure of how the solutions need to include these key aspects I emphasized into our conversation in order to get my message across.

Finding Out How to Layer Through Patterns 

            Through appointments at the Writing Center I realized how my essays are not just a wash (the first layer of a painting) but rather a finish master piece that requires to be multilayered in order to create dimension, shadows, and light. I just didn’t know how a multilayered essay should look like as I saw layering in writing by just stacking paragraphs underneath each other. But, when I went to the Writing Center to receive some help I quickly realized that multilayering in essay had much more than just putting paragraphs beneath one another. The way my meeting with a Writing Center staff member, Percival, started was him giving me a stack of images and I was told to line them up in a way that made sense to me. When I finished lining them up they looked something like the diagram you see below.

Percival asked me as to why I specifically chose to put them in that specific order. When I explained how it had to do with chronological order, color and the filling the figures had. Percival then explained how this is how I understood the concept of multi-layering. I understood it on how it made sense to me which was putting the items to chronological order, the color and then the filling and with that logic is how  I should think about when I am layering my writing. At that moment, it felt as though I had seen the light and it made so much sense on how that worked within my pieces of writing on how my key concepts: retention, proactive, and social and layer them within a comparative analysis in order or the structure and flow to work more efficiently within my Advocacy Project.    

Conclusion

     Seeing how I have gained confidence on being a good writer has grown through out the the series. I now believe that allowing myself to look for resources and help I can make a polished paper the way I am able to make my 4 hour drawings. Allowing myself to see that the process is a step in the right direction. It is something I needed to understand that wasn't taught to me in high school. So, even if I may not be the most perfect writer I believe that with the skills of understanding structure, flow and layering allows me to be a better writer. I am proud of all the essays I made through the series so far, and I am exciting to be able to work on many more through my art and public health double major career. So, I wanted to end my reflection with a big thank you for allowing me to have the space to learn these crucial items I needed in order to become a better and confident writer.