week 5 olivia

Friday's meeting with Lindsey and Marci went well--we workshopped. It felt great to be in direct process with the work we are doing whereas prior to Friday we had just been talking about out work more generally and thematically. Marci and Lindsey's feedback was definitely helpful, especially in relaying back to me the narrative that they interpreted from my poems. Sometimes I cannot tell if I'm being too cryptic or too straight forward--it's great to hear how the work reads. I'm happy that for the most part the work was received well--I haven't been feeling super positive about what I'm producing so far, but they were both encouraging. Workshopping Marci's work was inspiring and helpful as well. We have different styles and intentions in our poetry, so for me it is highly enjoyable to read her work. I admire her work as she uses language in exciting and fresh ways, allowing the reader to observe the world through a whimsical lens. Lindsey talked to us about the larger structure of our theses: if the work will have an arc, what thread we might loop through the work to craft some kind of cohesion as so to avoid losing the reader. My work still feels a little too preliminary than it probably should, so I'm not sure what my larger structure is right now, but definitely thinking about these things.

This weekend I finally had a writing break through and came away with several pages of writing that I feel good about! Even excited about! Because I'm picking up from where I left off on a project from last semester, it has been a little difficult to find a way to crack the work open again and have it feel fresh and compelling. But it's happening.