So far, I’ve enjoyed my experience with short story writing. I believe that writing short stories has greatly helped me before and during this coronavirus quarantine. The opportunity to write short stories means that I am forced to seek out inspiration for my writing and create something entirely new. I really enjoy the process of writing a short story, getting critiques from my cohorts and then adjusting it so that it becomes more fully realized. My experiences with writing fiction when compared to writing memoirs are vastly different. When I am writing fiction, the main things that inspire me are from things I enjoy. For example, when I was writing my second short story “The House of the Eggberts”, I drew heavy inspiration from the video game, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. Being a huge fan of the Animal Crossing games made me want to write a story about humanoid animals that had a message/theme/moral that you would likely see in a fable or a folk tale. When I choose to write fiction, I feel puzzled on what to write because writing fiction allows me to write about vastly anything. However, I feel like I limit myself to only a few unrealized ideas. Meanwhile, when I write memoirs, I feel as though my ideas become more fully realized. When I chose to write about receiving my grandfather’s wallet for the first time or about the toxic relationship I had with a former friend, I felt like I knew what I wanted to talk about. When I wrote, it felt like I already knew what to say and it felt as though everything I wrote just came naturally to me. Listening to critiques from my cohorts also helped me a lot as I knew what I needed to expand upon when I wrote these memoirs. With these critiques, I felt as though I was able to enhance my memoir writing to a level that I was really satisfied with. Out of the two, I prefer writing memoir pieces as I feel that it really forces me to dig down into memories that I wouldn’t normally talk about with other people. When I write them, I feel as though I am reliving those memories through my writing. I remember the good memories I shared with my grandpa up until his passing and I remember the falling outs I had with my former friend and the pain that came from our relationship. Writing memoirs feels more raw and emotional and I really get into writing about some of the painful memories I had throughout my life and how I learned to heal from them.
