Monday- I really enjoyed Julie Halpern’s presentation. Like Madison, the main aspect that I connected with her on was the journaling. I have tried and failed to journal quite a lot over the years, but the fact that she wasn’t as dedicated as she wanted to be, but still managed to develop into a great writer was very motivating for me. As others have mentioned, I really respected her for the fact that she was open about her past.
Tuesday- Overall, the group of students was right, but Jonathan was the standout piece for me. It was light hearted and clever, so it was enjoyable to listen to. The one thing I did observe though is that with student presenters at Writer’s Week, most students write about specific experiences that happened to them. Although I enjoy those presentations most of the time, I think it would be refreshing to hear more fiction writing as well.
Wednesday- I also really liked Sierra DeMulder. One of my favorite things about Sierra’s poetry is that she plays with point of view a lot, which brought creativity to her pieces. Although they touched many depressing topics, it wasn’t too much because she didn’t write them for the sake of being “deep.” Her poems made me consider a lot about the nature of humans. I also really liked how in her poems she addressed the audience as “you” it made it a lot more personal.
Thursday- I’m a bit mixed on how I feel about music day. Honestly, when I listen to music, I have a habit of focusing more on the musical aspects such as melody or rhythm as opposed to the lyrics. That is probably a side effect of listening to too much pop music (which has good background music and pointless lyrics) so I wasn’t really paying attention to their writing as much as their musical ability. To me, Hannah Lee was the standout; I actually paid attention to her lyrics and liked them. I think for the rappers, they may have had a good message, but I was too distracted by their medium.
Friday- I always came away with mixed opinions on Billy Lombardo. I was unable to connect with the topics he was writing about because they had no correlation to my life whatsoever. Even though Sierra DeMulder’s poems didn’t really have anything to do with my life, I was still able to draw personal connections, but with Mr. Lombardo I couldn’t for the most part. I did appreciate, however, his sense of description. When he described the baseball game where it started to rain, I really felt like I was there in the moment with him, but overall I did not like his presentation style.
Overall Reflection- Writer's week was very inspirational on the whole and I am very grateful that I have this experience when so many high school kids don't get the exposure that we do. Hearing the student writer's is great because I feel like when someone shares their writing with you, you learn more about them, so I enjoyed that part. As far as professional writers, they simply motivate me to write. Whether I want to be an author or not, I've enjoyed expressing myself on paper since I was little and I don't do it enough. I really hope that Writer's week's impact will stay with me throughout the entire year, so that I can hopefully write a lot more in the coming year and pluck up the courage to apply next year.
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