English 211 Micro-Writing Assignment 1

Rose Crelli

English 211

Kendell Newman Sadiik

February 1, 2015

Reflection Essay

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Ideas have been swarming my head for the past few days as I’ve consciously and unconsciously brainstormed for my micro-writing topic. Fictional plots, plots from previous stories I’ve written, poems, and adaptations from books I’ve read all floated around. I pondered them, disheartened, until finally I made my decision. It would be auto biographical! The format would be memories from my childhood when my family and I lived out on a trap-line in the Canadian wilderness. The beginning and end I changed in order to have a better introduction and conclusion. Here’s how the opening and closing scene went in real life. My family and I were hiking up a mountain across the river from our cabin. I was about 6 years old, and had convinced my parents to let me walk one of our huskies. Unfortunately, he caught wind of a porcupine and took off after it. Since he was about 100 pounds, my puny little six-year old body hardly stood a chance of holding him back. I still remember the rope burn 13 years later. My family and I were panicked, we didn’t know what he had gone chasing after, for all we knew, he was after a moose or a bear and could possibly lead the trampling, angry creature back to us. I kept picturing

him getting stomped on, or mauled to death, and it being my fault because I’d insisted on getting to hold his leash. Those were some of the longest and most terrifying moments of my life. Of course, it was even worse when we heard him scream, that was when my Father got out his rifle. When he finally came back, covered in porcupine pills and whimpering, we immediately rushed down the mountain, crossed the river as fast as possible, and my parents set to work de-quilling him.

The reason I chose this subject is because it seemed the most fitting to imagine in Twine format. There is really no linear structure, as it is viewed as flashbacks. Memories have no tangible plot line, and it made sense having the links because memories often go off on rabbit trails like that. When you tell someone a story from your past, you often say a word that reminds you of something else. Twine seemed the most appropriate and easy for me to imagine and conceptualize if it was told through a semi-related collection of memories.

Now that I look back on it, I suppose it wasn’t necessary for me to change the introduction and conclusion. When I started out, I had the intentions of taking my memories, and fictionalizing them completely. However, as soon as I got past the first two slides, and actually started to remember events, I realized I didn’t want to exaggerate them because they were too precious and personal for me. It almost seemed sacrilegious.

I tried to make it so that all of the slides had at least more than one connection between them, and so that the end had only one way to end. Everything is rather rough, but I think that the Twine format works out well in the end. Before I started, I googled examples of what people have done with Twine, and it’s really fascinating. There are so

many other directions I could’ve gone with mine, but for now, I’m content with what I managed to do. Another thing is that obviously, when this whole fiasco of our husky racing off, I wasn’t sitting down having reminiscent flashbacks, so in hindsight, I’ll probably change the opening and the ending. In the beginning, brainstorming process I was trying to remember events that would be a good, interesting hook to start off with. The porcupine incident was the first thing to come to mind.

 

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