story of my life

story of my life

     I didn’t always want to become a writer. My parents like to frequently remind me of how often I changed prospective professions as a child. I wanted to be an artist, an actress, a singer-songwriter. I think that this imaginative, self-discovery phase, is a phase that perhaps all children go through at a young age. However, given that the world is not fully made up of artists, actors, and singers, it makes sense that most people grow up and begin to make more practical career choices. I, on the other hand, could not get away from the what all these things had in common; storytelling.

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     I have always loved stories. For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in the art of storytelling, no matter what form it takes. I can remember staring at paintings for hours on end trying to extrapolate a deeper meaning from the shapes and colors on the canvas. I remember being moved to tears watching childish cartoon movies, and I remember listening to my favorite songs on repeat, trying to figure out the song’s narrative and memorizing all the words. Above all, I remember the joy and fascination of reading books.

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     My fascination with storytelling was brought to fruition when I would read. While there are multiple outlets and art forms that creators can use to tell stories, there is something so simple, raw, and uncomplicated about writing. While I did not always know that I wanted to become a writer, I realize now, that I have always wanted to become a storyteller. And moreso, I have realized that becoming a writer is the best and most rewarding outlet for me to do so.

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     Once I figured that out, it made finding a college major that much easier. Again, as I did as a child compiling a list of future jobs, I compiled a list of potential majors; History, Classics, Linguistics, Comparative Literature, and Journalism. What I came to realize was that there was a distinguishing key connecting factor that all of these majors had in common; storytelling. History and Classics told stories about the past. Linguistics reveals narratives about how languages were created, and Comparative Literature analyzes and transcribes stories from other languages.Journalism provides the opportunity to write my own stories on current events. I saw English as a broad, overarching umbrella that encompassed them all.

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     Upon starting college, I felt lost and confused, as many freshmen do. I stumbled my way through Gen Ed courses, took seminar courses, and honestly, for the most part, took classes at random. In the often confusing and overwhelming world of college courses, my English classes became a place of refuge. I found solace in studying Shakespeare, reading poetry, and writing essays. I got to read and write stories, it was something my brain could comprehend. It all felt easy and effortless.

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     As college progressed, I found myself in a cycle of similar courses year after year. I became so focused on satisfying specific course requirements for my major, that I got away from the real reason I wanted to pursue English: to tell my own stories.

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     In my junior year of college, I found myself having taken a large array of courses focusing on authors of different backgrounds and literature from different time periods. I had become an expert on Shakespeare, American women writers, and Arthurian Literature. I had originally taken English to pursue my own writing, however as I was entering my junior year, I realized that it was too late to specialize in creative writing, and my schedule did not allow me to take an extra course.

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     During my Spring semester of junior year, I took a class on James Joyce with Professor O’Callaghan, a course that I was not expecting to have as profound an effect on me as it did. I

had barely even heard of James Joyce, nevermind any of his works. I was only taking the course to fulfill an honors requirement. However, through learning about Joyce, I was presented with his complex and innovative techniques for writing literature. Techniques that made writing feel new, inspired, and interesting again.

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     The first book I read for that class was Joyce’s 1916 novel, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a piece of literature that blurs the lines between biography and narrative fiction. Joyce seamlessly blends narratives from his own childhood with that of the life experiences of the novel’s main character Stephen Dedalus. Through the character of Stephen, Joyce depicts his own struggle with his faith and the Catholic church. In class, I learned that this novel was classified as a bildungsroman, a term I had never heard before, meaning a novel that addresses the spiritual educational and psychological growth of a protagonist from childhood to adulthood. Learning about new types of literary genres and seeing how different authors wrote in these styles began to once again inspire me to pursue creative writing.

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     I also read Ulysses by James Joyce, a modernist novel that recounts a single day in the life of protagonist Leopold Bloom, while mirroring the narrative structure of Homer’s epic The Odyssey, that recounts Odysseus’s twenty year long journey home. Throughout my entire time as an English major, I had yet to encounter a story that bends the rules of literature to such an extent. The first three chapters of Ulysses are a continuation of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and follow Stephen Dedalus as the protagonist, then the story promptly switches main characters to follow the events of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom. Each chapter in the novel shares a direct counterpart to chapters in The Odyssey, and makes use of unique literary techniques. The chapter ‘Sirens’ uses of onomatopoeia in order to convey themes of music and

sound throughout. And the last chapter ‘Penelope’ is told from the perspective of Bloom’s wife, Penelope, in a strange stream-of-consciousness monologue.

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     While both of these novels had caught my attention and introduced me to new innovative ways of storytelling, Joyce’s short story collection Dubliners rekindled my love for storytelling, and introduced me to the medium in which I realized I wanted to write in; short stories. The dreary landscape of early twentieth century Dublin serves as a background for each story in the collection. This was a time when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and the country was gripped by the effects of deep-rooted Catholicism and British rule. The conflicting attitudes of the nation led to a state of paralysis in Ireland. This feeling of paralysis is captured throughout every story in Dubliners. Each character experiences hardships and feels like they are caught in a never-ending cycle of mundanity and repetition. Character’s are often presented with the illusion of choice; they think that they can do something to change the course of their lives, when in reality they are bound to their ordinary, everyday routines. The reality of their lives gets in the way of the lives they never get to live.

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     Of these short stories, one that particularly stood out to me was, “Eveline,” the fifth story in the collection. In “Eveline” the feeling of paralysis is depicted when Eveline has to choose between continuing to live at home in Dublin, supporting her single father and brothers, or running away to marry her lover, Frank.

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     At less than six pages long, Eveline is short and the reader does not get to see the character’s traits develop. Little is known about Eveline’s abusive father, misbehaving brothers, and shady love interest, but there is just enough information for the story to work. Reading Dubliners made me fall in love with the art short story.

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     As my senior year was rapidly approaching, my honors capstone thesis loomed over me. I knew that I was good at writing research papers and essays, but for my thesis project, I really wanted to challenge myself to do something that I have always been wanting to do.

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     I decided to write my own collection of short stories. I knew that this would be a challenge, but I also knew that I became an English major to pursue my own writing, so that’s what I would have to do. The work I read in Professor O’Callaghan’s class had inspired me so much that I had decided to work with her on this undertaking.

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     I had been so inspired by her class and newly inspired by short stories, that the summer after my junior year I had taken a Prose Fiction Writing Workshop course while studying abroad at Oxford University. The course was taught by Dr. Clare Morgan, the director of creative writing at Oxford. Taking her class had been incredibly daunting. I was surrounded by classmates who all have had some sort of prior experience with creative writing, while I had very little, if any. But as the weeks flew by, I found myself writing elaborate, complex, and intriguing short stories.

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     My professor had given the class prompts for our short stories. We would have to write an entire story based off of the first line that she would have already written. It was fascinating to see how my story differed from others in the class, and how each one of us had our own unique writing style and inspirations. We were also required to share our work in the class every other week. The thought of this had first made me sick to my stomach, however after receiving such generous, positive feedback from my peers, my confidence in creative writing soared.

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     The short stories that I plan to write for my collection, will be extensions of the ones I began to write in Oxford. I also aim to write about experiences in college and focus on themes of friendship, family, and personal growth. I think that it is important, and will be beneficial for me

to have an outlet to write about my personal experiences in college in a creative format. And I am also relieved to finally have an outlet for my writing, and to follow a passion that I had always put to the side.

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     I have gone through many stages of self discovery in college. While I have been influenced by my friends and my surroundings, I always try to remain true to myself, like I have done with my thesis. I have stayed true to my love of storytelling and I am giving myself the opportunity to finally get my stories out there. In these stories I hope to let my personality shine through in my writing and stay true to myself in the stories I tell to produce stories that articulate the complexities of growing up and the intricacies of my college experience.

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     As someone who has always loved storytelling, I am excited to embark on the journey of writing my own stories, learning what they will reveal about myself and my writing capabilities. I may not have always known I wanted to become a writer. But I realize now that it is precisely all I have ever wanted to do.