Reading Response: Week 13-2

I like how the book Steering Craft ends with “Waving Good-bye from the pier.” Initially I didn’t like this book very much. I thought it didn’t do a good job at helping me write short stories, especially compared to the book Writing Poetry which I thought was a lot more helpful. However, I now understand that this book was making me ready to let a story tell itself. It was preparing me to not be too focused about the plot or story line and let a story unravel in my writing. It is hard to let a story just unravel, and I am still struggling with not having a story line before writing. But I guess that’s why as the author says creative writing is a matter of self control. I have to control myself to not worry about not having a story line and keep writing freely letting characters and language guide me along. It is also a time consuming process and I realize that I have been struggling because I am not willing to spend time writing freely and revising (not that I don’t want to spend time writing but with the end of the semester it has been hard to devote a lot of time to creative writing). I know that if I want to make use of everything I’ve learnt in this book and write a decent short story, I will have to be patient as I revise my short story in this next week.