Creative Writing: Reflective Writing 1
Creative Writing
Reflective Writing
A Brief Overview of Reflective Writing
Reflective writing allows writers to assess their growth–or room for growth–
within specific genres and pieces of writing. Reflective writing can take a
number of forms: it can be a letter to the professor, an essay about one’s
writing, or a formal artist’s statement.
In most creative writing classes, the purpose of reflective writing is to assess
your growth as a writer by documenting your writing and revision process,
your struggles and successes as a writer, and your past and future goals
for writing. Creative writing professors use these reflective pieces to better
understand you as a writer as well as to understand how the pieces you wrote
throughout the term have evolved.
Audience
Typically, your professor is your primary audience. However, other audiences
might include your classmates, readers of a portfolio of your work, and
yourself. Ask your professor or check your assignment sheet/syllabus for
specific information about the audience for your piece and the form it must
take (letter, essay, artist’s statement, etc.).
Writing Process Tips
Reflective writing is about you as a writer and your processes in creating a
piece (or number of pieces) of writing. Therefore, it’s important that you keep
track of your drafts and feedback (from classmates, professor, and others)
throughout the semester–you will need some way of reminding yourself about
the process you underwent before arriving at the final version(s) of your
piece(s). To ensure you can write the best reflection possible:
Draft and Revise
Draft and revise throughout the term; it stands to reason that the best
reflective narratives are those by writers who have developed their ideas over
time, documenting their processes and perspectives.
Write Full Drafts
Write full drafts of pieces to submit for workshops. The more you write for the
workshop, the more useful and specific feedback you can get–and the more
opportunity you have to try new things with your writing, which will give you
much more to say in your reflection. It is certainly valid in a reflective narrative
to talk about which pieces you developed and why, and which you decided
not to work on, and why. But it’s much more compelling–and reflects a greater
depth of thought–to write about things you experimented with in a single
piece, and rejected or developed along the way.
The purpose of reflective writing
is to assess your growth as a
writer and to determine how your
pieces have evolved throughout
the term.
It is important to keep track
of your drafts and feedback
throughout the semester. This
will help you in your reflective
writing.
Example Reflections
OK: “I turned it into workshop
unfinished and then people gave
me some ideas for the ending so I
tried one here but I don’t think it’s
working.”
Better: “I tried this and it didn’t work,
so I tried this, and then tweaked that,
and then....”
The latter example walks readers
through a more intricate--and
therefore more thoughtful--process.
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