My Writing Journey
Prior to this year, my perception of myself as a writer was confined to that of narration--within my literary nonfiction course, I found myself comfortable with accepting the role of the composer. For years, I had always perceived this flow of my narration as writing, void of the influence of the “academic writing” category I would place lab reports and scientific writing within. However, a transition towards realizing the transfer of knowledge that may be generated between genres was initiated through my opportunity to act as the student editor for Writing Moves, the Wake Forest Writing Minor’s student journal. Here, I was asked to annotate, edit, and contribute my own essay to the journal. Writing Moves was curated to display and celebrate the writing abilities of students at Wake Forest and to be used pedagogically to exemplify the critical and creative thinking desired within the Writing Program. These student writers, nominated by professors within the program, were selected for their abilities to craft passionate, intriguing, and complex ideas into well-written essays that display strong rhetorical moves.
As the student editor, I was grateful for the knowledge I acquired not simply in editorial tasks, but as a writer myself. Through working closely with the URECA faculty mentors and student writers, I gained a greater appreciation for the transformative nature of writing when it is predicated on diverse, intentional perspective-taking. Just as I gained different points of view through collaboration with my faculty mentors, the student essayists created nuanced, informative, and generative texts by considering a multiplicity of views during the writing process. Although writers may have initially been led by their own perspectives and positionality, proactive awareness of the views of others, through research, reflection, and analysis, provided these essays with a firm foundation for critical and innovative thinking.
Similarly, as the editor I was tasked with taking into consideration the perspective of the writer alongside my own perspective--within this, I found a balancing act at play. I was pushed to identify where my own notions as a writer might suppress those of the student and developed a great respect for the uniqueness of each voice. This movement, transformation in perspective, and opportunity to grow were experienced with every essay I worked on for this journal.
Turning to my own piece within the journal, “Our Fire Falls,” I was challenged by my habitual tendencies to lean into the metaphorical when apprehensive about the facts within a narrative. Typically, I had found comfort in utilizing figurative language to immerse a reader into my writing when the topic was more ambiguous. However, when the facts are few, there was little left to ground my language, leaving readers not pulled into the scene, but rather stranded as distant observers. The known was comfortable, and the hazy moments were shaded in vague language. Through writing this memoir, I was challenged to grapple with the unknown. And in this, I discovered the nuance and depth created when balancing a story with what is known and what is not—in ceasing the chase for a perfect account, I found an experience worth sharing.
The memory of the thunderstorm and its remains has always been prominent in my mind—not for its details, but for the foreign and distinctive emotions it bears. When writing this memoir, my difficulty didn’t necessarily stem from what to write about, but rather how to. I was accustomed to crafting narratives from a known plot and masking unknown details in figurative language. However, through exploring essays in Elisabeth’s class, I found the power in working with what I wasn’t certain of—and through this, the recalled details and emotions were amplified. I found a scene could be crafted to both reflect my tendency towards poetic prose as well as to draw a reader into the moment.
When realizing this retelling was not a perfect account, but a memory fueled through personal significance, I called my brother and father for their recollections. It became evident that the prominent moments were varied in our storytelling, and determining how to incorporate their perspectives while maintaining my own voice was a new task. How does one fluidly tell a single story that is based on multiple recollections? In order to do so, I focused not necessarily on the differences, but on the details that connote individual meaning. For my father, the return back to the fallen powerline; for my brother, the near-death experience and the gratefulness for life; and I, perhaps a loss of innocent curiosity. Through these moments, I felt I could tell my story, while still validating the recollections of my family members. A powerful moment has the ability to bear varied individual significance—and through this, a plethora of equally valid stories may be shared.
It is intriguing to look back at my experience and see that despite belonging to distinct discourse communities, my practice in grounding and specificity within narration did not stay within the confines of the personal essay--rather, I have found that my practice in storytelling has translated directly into my writing as a scientist. Now, I am able to reflect and see that my practice in succinctness and intentional narration has furthered my skills to translate an experiment, research report, or scientific summary into a palatable piece. However, prior to its apparent translation into my lab reports, this transferral of skills arose through the vessel of science journalism.
Following my summer editing essays, I was enrolled in a science journalism course, hoping to bridge my two passions: storytelling and science. With my writing minor, a single high school newspaper class, and biology major at my disposal, I had a vague understanding of science journalism, but no concrete grounds of its contents. However, I was determined to learn how to guide others to appreciate and understand the science I had spent three years in awe of. Through copiously attempting to write a compelling lead, reading professional pieces, and trial-and-error, I grasped a better understanding of the genre’s style--precise, entertaining-yet-informative, and devoid of scientific jargon to maximize the common reader’s comprehension. Through this course, I was better able to communicate where research fits into the scientific field’s discourse in an entertaining, yet informative manner.
Through reading my scientific journalism blog, I am able to watch as my language shifted towards that of the more journalistic nature, my ability to select applicable quotes became more intuitive, and my hopes to improve my communication of science grew into a fine-tuned skill set. One of my pieces, “Quality of Life Improvements through Movement In Patients With Dementia,” will always have a special place in my heart. In the research conducted by Dr. Christina Hugenschmidt and Christina Soriano, I found the mix of creativity and science I had always desired. Shortly after writing this story, I reached out and asked about my availability to work as an undergraduate neuroscience research assistant within the lab. Now, a year later, I work alongside those I interviewed for this piece, furthering my understanding of their work through IMPROVment as well as writing numerous papers for my courses influenced by their work on Alzheimer’s Disease, neuroimaging, and improvisational dance.
Similarly to research influenced by the arts and sciences, when I reflect upon my writing experiences within college, I have always pictured it as a Venn-diagram of sorts: to the left, the
more objective, concise, and factual writing of my science degree, supplemented by lab
practicals, reports, and paper presentations. To the right, I find my more creative tendencies
blossoming in the forms of literary nonfiction, literary analysis, and poetry. Together, they align
within the grounds of interdisciplinary research and science journalism. However, this transfer of knowledge perhaps cannot be contained with separate spheres, but have more of an influence than I have previously thought. This became most evident to me while composing one of our final projects for this course, the writing guide for our major. For this assignment, I was surprised by the ease with which I was able to compose a guide for the formal lab report. I anticipated this assignment to be a tedious one, however, 10 pages later with minimal frustration and an odd sense of joy conjured, I was proved wrong. Intuitively, this makes sense. However, I have always had a strange relationship with the lab report--initially, I felt extreme frustration, confusion, and strangled by the lack of creativity presented. However, it has only been through struggling with it that I have come to terms with the creativity presented in the choices made, and the freedom provided in its structure--I am able to focus my attention on my word choice, references, and interpretations when the structure is already laid out for me.