Reflective Essay

Here's what I have so far...enjoy!

“Out of Thyme”

It’s five o’clock in the evening, and my stomach voices its hunger. I won’t be able to go home until 6. I already know what meal I want to cook. I try to make a mental checklist of the ingredients I need but would have to refer to the recipe. Writing is much the same.

In a creative nonfiction class, I composed a personal essay on my experiences at my family’s lake house in the Finger Lakes region of central New York. I settled on this topic quickly. But what method would be best to convey it? I spent at least some time up there each year. I have so many experiences tucked away neatly in my memory. Yet, for this assignment I had to choose the most relevant to my focus.

But what was my focus? I still had no shopping list for my essay. I chose the meal but had many recipes from which to choose.

I arrive at my girlfriend’s apartment and consult the magazine that has a recipe for butternut squash pizza. The ingredients listed are refrigerated pizza dough, one medium butternut squash, ricotta cheese, half of a medium onion, and thyme. I purchased almost all of the ingredients, except for thyme. I jot down some other items for future use and leave to go to the grocery store.

As I drafted my essay, I decided to create a travel essay. My journey started in New Jersey and finished at my family’s cottage in New York. I knew what I wanted to describe, the rolling hills surrounding the Finger Lakes and the sanctuary they created. Everything seemed to line up, but something was missing. The writing seemed flat and disjointed. There was no spice.

I handed my first draft in and received comments from my professor. She said the themes were good but developing coherence and focus would be paramount for making this piece stand out.

I enter the supermarket and head straight for the baking/spice aisle. I search the racks for thyme. Oregano, basil, and parsley crowd the shelves. Thyme is very stealthy. I come across cilantro and bay leaves, then rosemary and sage. I must be heading in the right direction. I finally come across a bottle with its label turned so that only the manufacturer’s address is shown. I grab the bottle and exhale deeply as the word thyme appears on the opposite side.

After receiving her comments, I set up some time to visit her during office hours. I was able to flesh out ideas on how to tighten the piece. I used her comments as a starting point, and I articulated my concerns with the piece. The meeting proved productive as my focus slowly began to form.

I arrive back at the apartment with all the ingredients inside. The butternut squash and onion roasts in the oven. I prepare to knead the dough into a rectangular form. The dough is ready as the squash and onions exit the oven. I sprinkle them onto the pizza dough and dab ricotta cheese in vacant spaces. I throw the pizza into the oven and wait to sprinkle thyme.

With most of my writing, I need to take a break. Usually, this comes right after a draft or a long editing session. This is my baking period. There’s not much I do with a piece, in the physical sense, during this time. Plenty of ideas cause many neurons to fire. I can see a final outcome of my work, yet I have to read its words. I only conceptualize the final piece.

Freewrite for Exploratory Writing

Here's what I freewrote in class:

Was there a point in your writing where you almost forgot it was an assignment?

The one essay where I found myself writing with no pressure is during my memoir. However, this is completely unfocused and has yet to be polished. I feel such a connection to what I wrote. But there’s so much to tell that I would be the basis of a book rather than an essay.

I did, however, find joy in writing about my family’s cottage and the Finger Lakes region. Again, I have a strong connection to this place. At some points, I felt like I was searching for material, yet at other points I was not.

It was only a matter of time before that piece feel into place and was highly readable. Is it perfect? No, by no means. Though, I feel this has some potential to capture something important.

Describe a point I got stuck?

I found writing my nature essay was the most difficult. It wasn’t that I was stuck. It was that I had this great idea but did not know how to communicate it.

I still love the idea, but the method of which to attack is still unclear. I wrote shit. It wasn’t disjointed, but it wasn’t clean. I felt like I filled the page with words that carried no weight. Yet I still loved the idea.

It wasn’t until I met with Dr. Chandler that the idea began to blossom into words and concepts that I could capture. Instead of focusing on the idea I initially had, I refocused the idea into a slightly different concept. I was only a matter of perspective that made this essay much easier to write. The hardest part is getting past the “Great Idea” that you conceived in your head.

What did you learn about yourself?

With all the essays I had many neurons firing. These neurons, at times, proved to be beneficial. Nevertheless, they also proved to be a nuisance. They often distracted me with new ideas that weren’t necessarily relevant to the work I was writing. The hardest part was focusing on a particular topic. I still find that I have trouble with focusing. Is it an inherent flaw or something that can be overcome?

I believe the latter. It is not that I can’t focus, it is that I focus in a broad sense. Dr. Rich told our senior seminar class to “land the helicopter.” It’s nice to see a broad picture, but then it won’t be clear. The reader won’t know what you’re writing about. Like Annie Dillard, the key to focusing is to describe your object in great detail. After doing so you can draw your conclusions.

Has anything has changed about writing as a craft/gift?

Writing as a craft is a balance between intellectual and emotional. I would be the first to admit that it takes work. But anyone can do it. Writing is not an elitist art. It is an art for the masses. As long as you have the basic knowledge of grammar than you can be a writer. But it’s not only the knowledge. It’s the heart that’s put into it.



After all of this, I realized I'm learning more through my unfinished pieces, one of which I recently finished. So my focus will be on...

What did I learn from unfinished work?

Writing Process

This blog will be in regards to my literary journalism piece about Bound Brook and Hurricane Floyd..

I found my focus by going back into my past and finding something that seemed worthy to report on. Clustering helped me a lot with this.

I had written several pieces in a journal, which helped me to organize. In reality, I just used some snippets as sketches. But I really found my starting point when I actually visited the new Dunkin Donuts.

From here I just wrote using various sources to compile my piece. I reflected on certain parts of the visit I made one week after the storm to help a friend's relative.

I new what evidence I wanted to use but didn't know where to go with it. I finally found a the point after I read through my first draft. I had to read and edit before I knew what I wanted to say.

Publication Analysis

Ecotone seems to be a good fit and has the highest chance of publication for me, I think.

I still have yet to receive the magazine as there was no mail delivery on Saturday. Hopefully, today it will come. Otherwise, I'll use a back up, Weatherwise.

As for as the submission policies go, they are as follows:
The journal Ecotone emphasizes the deep importance of place in contemporary writing. We hope to break across genres, and across disciplines, to discover writing that is new, dangerous, and refuses to stay safely in a single place. Our goal is an ambitious one: to reclaim landscapes, to remap and reimagine place in writing that is vital, thorny, and alive.

Ecotone is published by the Creative Writing Department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. We publish high- quality works of creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, as well as interviews with new and established authors about the idea of place in literature.

Ecotone welcomes unsolicited works of creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry with a specific focus on the idea of place.


I have yet to find the percentage of freelance work. They read between Aug. 15 to April 30.

...more later.

Reconstructing Floyd

Here's an excerpt from the Lit. Journalism piece.


“I’d like a coffee with cream and two sugars.”

That sounds odd to me, not that I’m ordering coffee. It’s odd that I’m ordering coffee here in the new Dunkin Donuts in the town of Bound Brook, New Jersey. A year ago, the ground had not been broken for building. Instead dreams were broken six years prior by Hurricane Floyd.

This particular spot had a cinderblock skeleton and some rubble next it after the floodwaters receded. During the flood, this area had upwards of 20 feet of water surrounding the structures. Yet that was only the beginning. A short time after a fire broke out and left only that skeleton.

Now, I’m ordering coffee at this same spot. Has the town resurged? Councilman Carey Pilato believes the answer is a resounding yes. “The significance here is a national chain is willing to invest in Bound Brook,” she says. I leave Dunkin Donuts and walk east on Main St.

I can still spot the watermark on certain buildings, over fifteen feet high in some cases. It is hard to imagine but this area resembled an Americanized Venice, Italy seven years ago. St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Chuch roughly equated to St. Marks Basilica. Police rescue boats acted as gondolas transporting people through the sunken town. For nearly a week the borough slumbered beneath flood waters.

The storm hit businesses the hardest in Bound Brook. According to the Bound Brook Business Improvement District, the flood waters contributed to an estimated nine million dollars of damage to local merchats. Government aid trickled in at a pace much slower than the flood waters. The Federal Emergency Management Agency granted thirteen million dollars in aid to households affected by Hurricane Floyd; businesses had to apply for loans through the Small Business Adminstration.

Pyllis Pournaras , former chair of the Bound Brook Business Improvement District, shared concerns over the lack of financial assistance provided to local businesses. “This town really took it on the chin,” Pournaras said about the flood of lack of funding six years ago. Yet the town has changed drasticaly since she made these remarks.

The parking lot for the NJ Transit rail station is on my right, almost directly across from the Dunkin Donuts. In this commuter lot, the borough has redevelopment plans. In the future this lot will house condominiums and a parking garage.

Nurturing Nature

I don't think I'll have a problem writing a nature essay as most of mine ideas have been about nature in some aspect. But the topic of choice seems to be a problem. I have plenty of ideas to write about but have not really settled on one.

There's a resevior down Rte. 22 in Hunterdon County that would be an interesting topic. I remember my grandfather used to take my cousin and me to it. This resevior is said to be a flooded valley, and houses rest at the bottom of it. I wonder if this is true and what the circumstances around it were at the time. Though, this would be more of an exploratory than about nature, I think.

I could cope out and write about something up by the lake house. The gorge is always full of wonder. Various waterfalls are up here too. Hmm?

I could write about a park near my house that I've explored almost inside and out.

There's some trails that lead to the little league field. I'm surprised that this hasn't been bulldozed and turned into townhouses or something.

I can talk about canoeing down the Delaware-Raritan Canal.

Floods always happen around my area after periods of heavy rains. Are we getting too close to the waterfronts? Have the flood plains been over-developed?

I'm not really sold on anything yet. Maybe I should go hiking and just write what I see and form my essay off of that.

Or maybe I should focus on the season fall as it currently absorbs us.

Grr...

The Nature of Nature Essays

"Pop goes the weasel because the weasel goes pop."

Oh, the early 90s how I miss you. Bare with me here as I'm writing this blog without the use of my book or syllabis. Dillard's point is much clearer than Barnes' point. Dillard focuses tightly on a weasel drawing out positive features that we (humans) would consider barbaric. The weasel is free because it only reacts based on its situation. There's no analzying it. Dillard recalled an account of a hunter finding a weasel skull attached to the neck of a bird he shot. Reactions keep/try to keep us alive and out of danger. Thus, the weasel tries to escape but to no avail. Yet, this is the only stress (if we can call it that) a weasel faces.

Barnes' point is much more thematic. It has to do with the love of a mother (or was it a father) of a daughter. This daughter wants to battle a forest fire, I think, although it could just be the coffee making things more creative. Well...i'll write more later on this once I'm fully awake and have battled other commuters.