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For this tutorial, we attempted to write an ekphratic piece of work in relation to culture and method. I decided to write a poem, using an exhibit from the ACMI excursion as my model. I chose the exhibit on the song, "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend"; in particular, I used Harley Quinn's rendition of the song, from Birds of Prey, as my model. This is the poem I wrote:

Needed and wanted
Powerful and unbroken
Like joy
Alone and unloved
Frail and twisted
Like pain
Valued and worthy
Dazzling and glorious
Like a diamond
I am fragmented

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Culture as an idea is somewhat interesting. Especially as, depending one what one person defines as "culture" the results you receive will be vastly different from person to person. For this classes exercise I thought about some of the culture of the family I'm currently writing about. Set in a fantasy world, this would be the culture of the lower-middle class residents of Avarika, as sizeable kingdom.

- Women are expected to do cooking and raise the children. They're also expected to be the better educated of the family, and in charge of teaching children more educational knowledge.
- Men do the basic housework and teach youth how to maintain a household
- Majority of the kingdom worship the "Nine", a pantheon of nine gods each with a different domain, or series of domains. Most people will also choose a particular member of the Nine as their prime deity and worship that deity fully. This would usually be a choice made based off your lifestyle or your work. For example, fishermen would likely pray to the Sixth, who rules over water and the oceans.

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Character voice is something that I find incredibly important, as it should be in any writing. But especially in the kind of stories and style of writing I aim to accomplish, where the story is very much character driven. Giving your characters distinct voices that set them apart from each other and embody their own personalities is incredibly important and can be quite a lengthy task. Furthermore the idea of using voice to set the theme and setting of the narrative is an interesting possibility that I believe could be used to create very compelling character-driven narratives.

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I find dialogue and the different ways you can use it to vastly different effects to be really interesting. The way you implement dialogue can have such a vast effect on the piece you write and the impact it has. One thing I find especially interesting is the writing of texts using ONLY dialogue. I experimented with in some of my writing late last year, where I wrote a scene writing only the dialogue with no quotation marks or dialogue descriptors. It was just line by line dialogue with each new line marking a new character speaking. I found the results to be quite interesting, it creates a much faster paced scene with a lot more focus on the character's voice.

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In this workshop session, I attempted a second experiment using the second-person point-of-view. I aimed to improve my usage of the second-person from that of my original experiment. All-in-all I wasn't particularly happy with how this piece turned out. It feels like it's missing something. I think be describing more of the "external" elements of the scene, it lost some of the rawness to the immersion that the original experiment had.
Here is the text:

ba-dum...
ba-dum...
ba-dum...

Your heart beats slowly, sluggishly. You let out a raspy breath, the warm air harsh on your dry mouth and cracked, peeling, lips.
Water...
Food...
Hunger...
Thirst...
You drag your gaunt, starved form across the rough stone. Searching, searching in the darkness for the sounds you can hear. The trickling of a glass being filled. the rush of flowing water, the dripping of a tap left on. Always right there, in front of you.
And yet always unreachable.
Constantly just out of reach, taunting you, tantalising, torturous. The constant thought of water leaving your throat more parched, painful, agonising.

You remember hunger.

Your stomach aches, starved, tight like a knot, pain that makes your body want to curl up and scream. Pain that makes the dirt below your frail body seem appetising.
Then there's the smell.
The air is overflowing with the scent of a thousand decadent meals. Rich steamy meats, sickly sweet desserts, freshly picked fruit, newly baked cake. Every food that comes to your mind is there, filling the air with delicious scents. Your body groaning and aching with pain and need.

Why?

Why can't you drink?
Why can't you eat?

How it tortures you so, the constant agonising need. You can hardly remember anything before this. In fact you can't remember ever having sated yourself.
This is all you know.

Your stomach groans, you take another gulp of harsh air.

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After discussing what "writing" is, we engaged in a Pomodoro session. At the start of the session, I wasn't quite sure what I would write, but inspired by the discussion of writing I ended up writing this text. The text contains a very physical and visual representation of what writing is, while also alluding to the power contained within writing. I quite enjoyed the representation of writing that I ended up creating, within it describing writing as beautiful for its imperfections and flawless for it, perfect and yet chaotic.
Here is the text:

The stained glass panes of the decadent window glimmered brightly as the clouds finally parted. Rays of colours sunlight lighting up the dim, stone brick room.
Amirya smiled gently, the warm sunlight caressing the soft skin of her hand. 'What beautiful weather' she mused, thinking back to how terribly stormy it had been when she awoke to thunder early that morning.
Amirya lifted her pen back out of the ornate inkpot. The long raven's feather of the extravagant quill glimmering in the sunlight. Silver pen-tip sparkling as she tapped it on the gilded rim, letting the excess ink return to the depths of the dark fluid.
She set the quill to the parchment and resumed her writing. Graceful, yet fragile, Amirya wrote with a sense of purpose. Letters flowing out like the great waves that battered the cliffs below her tower. Perfect by design and yet chaotic, beautiful in their imperfections and flawless for it.
She dipped her quill once again in the ink, recoating the silver tip with a layer of darkest black. She watched as an excess droplet slid free from the quill, falling back into the void of the inkpot.

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- Agreed with Jimmy, found repetition of "The colour of my skin" to be interesting and effective.
- I find the stigmatism of colour and the importance we place on it to be interesting and illogical. There's soo many other things that can be equally debilitating and disadvantageous and yet we place so much importance on skin colour, why? Because it's the easiest to see? Sure it's the easiest difference to see, but there are so many other differences between us, differences far vaster and that create far more adversity. She describes saying you "don't see colour" to be dismissive of the adversity that people of colour have overcome. I argue however, that so many people, coloured or not, face so much more adversity, adversity unique to them, adversity with the potential to be far worse than that created from the colour of your skin. So why do we not place the same focus on those, why place so much focus on this one factor that creates adversity, when there are so many other factors that can create far far more difficult challenges than skin colour alone ever will.
- "The notebook is best used as a storehouse..."
- Found the tortured artist stereotype interesting.
- I find stream of consciousness writing interesting.

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In this session, I attempted to experiment with the use of the second-person point of view to create a powerful and compelling text that strongly immerses the reader within the narrative.I was inspired to do so by Laurie Moore's text, "How to Be a Writer". I found the second-person to be greatly effective in immersing the reader, and was able to invoke very raw emotions within the reader.
Here's the text:

Your heart races. The air around you feels solid, as if it were a barrier, blocking the path afore you. You take a step. Another step. Your lungs burn with the effort. Your breath ragged, your heart pounding like a drum close to bursting. You drag your leg forward once more, pulling your foot through the stone-like air and planting it firmly, uncertainly, in front of yourself.

Another step.
Why do you walk?
Why does it hurt?

It’s excruciating. Your lungs burn, your chest feels tight, akin to a knife plunged and twisting within your heart. Your legs weigh heavily, as if wrought from iron. To lift your foot is agonising. Placing it down even more so, sending jolts of pain through your body, akin to an electric current, sparking and bursting throughout your conductive veins.

Why do you take another step?

You place your foot down, carefully, warily. You gasp in pain, your lungs are on fire, your heart slams within your chest as if longing to be free.

Why can’t you stop?

This is all you know. Pain and futile effort. You take another step. Where are you going, that it would take such effort? You gulp down the air, heavy like lead in your throat. You close your eyes, you block out the pain.

You take another step.

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Met the cohort of my Major in the first tutorial session today. I found it interesting how so many others resonated with the feeling that no matter what they try, they keep being drawn back to creative writing. The discussion on the first week's readings was quite interesting, the way that so many others similarly resonated with the meaning in "The Writer's Paradox" interested me a lot. Especially as a maladaptive daydreamer myself, the idea that writing and our ideas give us freedom is something I agree with a lot. It's not just about telling a story, it's about immersing yourself in an entirely different world. I do wish we further discussed Orwell's "Why I Write" as I found myself particularly interested in his opinion on the writer's motivations. However, I did find the conversation on Laurie Moore's "How to Be a Writer" piece rather fascinating. Personally, I greatly enjoyed her unique use of 2nd person and a structure atypical of biographies that turned it into a read that I rather enjoyed. Finally, another student and I both read out our textual responses to the task given in the first lecture. It was really fascinating seeing how we both took such a different approach to the piece, with myself going full-on descriptive, painting the scene in an objective light, nothing of my own feelings. Meanwhile, the other student's piece went much more personal, relating the fruit to himself and his experience with a metaphor that came to him as he wrote.

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LEC01 28/2/23 - Writing: Textual Response to Image

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LEC01 28/2/23 - Writing: Textual Response to Image

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The bright colours of the orange’s skin glinted, reflecting the light from above. Four fruit nestled together, vivid green stems protruding from their tops, leaves extending out, yet to be trimmed. The light from above, shining down, highlighting the bright surface of the fruit’s skin and the reflective sheen to the fresh leaves. Leaves and stems overflowed from the small bowl that held the fruit. Dark grey in colour, the bowl was, with a rough stone-like appearance, matching the plate it was set upon. The dark black wood of the surface they lay upon gave a solid background to the scene, highlighting the intense colours of the fruit.