I've always believed that writing was more of an action than a thing, a verb rather than a noun. Over these last few months, I've really been exposed to writing as a process and how self-reflection leads to clearer, more expertly composed pieces.Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

The piece to the left started as a creative-nonfiction piece, written for an English class I took in the Fall of 2010. Though creative-nonficiton oriented, the assignment required me to do a significant amount of independent research. I was however allowed to choose any topic that suited us.

At the time, I was pretty enamored with zombies and the idea of surviving a zombie apocalypse scenario like that which is presented in various forms of media-movies, television, video games, and even books-so they were the obvious choice to write on. The presence of zombies across such a variety of media got me thinking about why it was they were such a prominent force in our pop cultural identity.

Loosely framed around my own history and experience with zombies in the media, the piece is more than anything an exploration of the undead and the cultural implications our culture's obsession over them that comes with our fixation.

Though the project was obviously a blast to work on, I felt like I didn't do the essay justice after I'd turned it in. I struggled with how to structure the essay, and even with the subject matter: sometimes it seemed to ridiculous to be studying, and other it felt almost like what I wanted to say had already been said, but more intelligently by people like Chuck Klosterman.

Fast forward a year, and I found myself given an opportunity to redeem myself. For my introduction to the writing minor, I was required to rewrite a previously written piece for a new audience. Jackpot! I knew this was my chance to make Z-Day the essay it should have always been.

I struggled for awhile with how I actually wanted to approach this new piece, since this new audience was to ideally be reached through an already established form of media (e.g. a popular magazine, an academic journal, etc.). After running through a couple ideas and ultimately failing, I decided to shake up my process. Instead of focusing on the zombies, I'd focus on the humans they prey on.

In Z-Day, I discovered that the fascincation with zombies seemed to be, at the center of everything, the humans and how they established communities and worked together to survive. From there, I began drawing parallels to the Occupy Wall Street movements in Zucotti Park. Though the metaphor might be a little loose and abstract, there are definite similarities between surviving a zombie apocalypse and fighting for the right to be heard on Wall Street.

Rolling Stone seemed to be the perfect cross-section of pop-culture and politics for me to work with, and I thought the it would be interesting and challenging to work on the visual elements of the piece.I had also never really tried political or journalistic writing before, and the assignment was a great opportunity to try writing in those genres.

Below are the final product of my work and the article that inspired the layout and design. The experience was incredibly challenging, having to not only consider the text of my piece, but also how the visual elements added to what I was saying. I really feel, that though this piece was a struggle from beginning to end, I've created something worth creating here. With this piece, I think I've redeemed Z-Day.

 

 

From here, I was to take what I had written and "remediate" the essay into a form of new media. My original idea for The Walking Dead of Wall Street was actually to make an online comedy article, simliar to one that would be found on Cracked.com. But, when it was suggested that the ideas was more appropriate for the remediation project, I decided to shelve the idea and come back to it after the repurposing assignment.

To the left is the storyboard I created for the project. For the most part, I stuck to the design presented here. There was also a second storybard, but thye two ended up looking nearly identical. The goal was to make the site look as similar to Cracked.com as I could.

For the past five summers or so, I've worked at Michigan State University doing website design and development, so a website seemed like it would be a good suit for my skill set. However, I was pressed for time, and decided to use a wiziwig editor to expedite the creative process. Normally, I hand-code my sites in html and css, which is kind of a pain, since it can take forever, and the speed Google Sites offered was initially very attractive. But, I was not prepared for the complete lack of control that Google Sites allowed me.

Normally, I have control over every, single aspect of a website I make. On any other given day, I'd be in favor of placing restrictions on creativity, simply because I think it forces people to become even more creative in coming up with solutions. But the amount of control a person has to relinquish when using Google Sites is borderline ridiculous. I felt trapped, and my final product shows a lot of my frustration. When it was finished, the site had become less abouts stretching myself to learn new media ad more of an exercise in perserverance.

I can't say I didn't learn from the experience though. I've learned that I shouldn't compromise my own vision if at all possible, even for the sake of convenience. The work I ended up producing was below my standard, I don't feel good about what I've made, and the time I spent on the project was wasted because I don't feel like it went towards creating something worthwhile.

As above with the re-purposing assignment, my website and its inspiration are below.

This sequence of projects pushed me more than other assignments have, but I'm glad I had to do them. I definitely feel stronger as a writer having gone through this evolutionary process, and it's kind of nice to know that a failure can turn into a victory, and it keeps me on my toes to know the reverse is true, too.