Week 7 Theme 5

Evaluation.

Writing is hard. I knew that when I signed up. I also knew that I was new to creative writing and that I would need to wear the keys of my keyboard to a smooth polish if I wanted to write with vibrancy and voice. Daily Themes seemed like a good place to start.

Seven weeks and thirty-three themes later, this eventual goal seems only farther away than it was when I began. I suppose that should be a heartening sign that I was learning. But that does not comfort the part of me who tries to recreate the musical elegance I read in the writers I admire, only to find that I’d composed a syncopated staccato.

I seem to have trouble with the “theme” part of the course. A theme is an underlying idea, an invariant that grounds the reader in a moving story. When I began the course, I wanted to learn how to orchestrate themes – to choose my words not only to express my ideas, but also to sound like them. I also wanted to emphasize those ideas at just the right points to keep the reader moving alongside my own thoughts.

While the words flow more easily now, and while I can say that I’ve improved on the goals I set earlier in the semester, I can still only capture that elusive eloquence in brief moments of inspiration or luck. Hopefully the next few weeks of writing will make that less accidental and more frequent.