Nicholas Schweers

Maj Hodde

5/1/18

Creative Portfolio

 

 

Reflective Tag-

ERH-411 requires that we dig into our own minds and write about experiences in our past, using creativity to not only complete but also enhance the writing that we do. This is something that I struggle with, because I feel as though I am ultimately not that creative. So when we were assigned to create three of our own creative memoir pieces, I was a little bit nervous but very excited. I thoroughly enjoy creative writing, but it was definitely a challenge adding elements such as a different perspective and

Writing Process Journal-

Journal 1- My first creative memoir for this class was easy. I picked one of my favorite memories that still is very alive in my mind. It seemed effortless to describe not only how I felt but also to describe the senses that I had observed during the moment. Everything was so clear to me, but it was only a memory. While memoirs are essentially just the telling of a memory, it is better if they conclude with some lesson or anything that leaves the reader feeling like they had learned or gained something from the reading. After a classmate had revised it, they pointed out that my conclusion did need more work. I spent a good amount of time thinking and writing then re-writing the end, focusing on some sort of lesson that I pulled from the experience. Finally, I realized that capturing the moment and enjoying the present company while you can is the important lesson from that memory, and that conclusion resulted in the completion of this memoir.

Journal 2- My second memoir presented a particular challenge for me. This memory had faded a little bit. I remembered the major details of the experience, but the ricochet memoir format required that I add a good amount of back and forth dialogue into the story. Luckily, Yuri and I had done a lesson plan that revolved around incorporating fiction to spice up your memoir when you cannot remember everything that was said or that happened. By adding dialogue, which did not happen exactly as I wrote it, the memoir became more relatable and understandable to the audience. Overall, making the dialogue was my greatest challenge with this memoir, but it also allowed the memoir to flow a lot more smoothly than if I had just described the situation.

Journal 3- My third memoir, or a different point of view memoir, was by far my favorite creative writing project that we performed this semester. In this, we had to write a memory we had, but from the perspective of someone or something else that experienced it. I liked this because it allowed me to think outside the box, and really embrace the creativity that I struggle with. I wrote about the same experience as my second memoir, but not from the perspective of a person, but the car that we moved. I attempted to make it seem as though the cars were people and that we were criminals. It was such a ridiculous sway on the story that it was hard to create the cars characteristics, and even harder to finish the story in a way that lets the audience understand that it was from the perspective of a car. All it took was some advice from my peer reviewer, and a good amount of time on revision, and I eventually ended it by revealing to the audience that the narrator was a car, and that we were the bad guys.

Three Original Memoir Pieces-

Creative Memoir 1-

Clouds covered the sun, spreading an orange tint over the rolling hills that spread out before us. A glowing spring wind swept around us, bringing with it the sweet smell of blooming flowers, trampled weeds, and the sweetest aroma of the cigars we were smoking. The words rang out from my roommate’s speaker.

“Don’t you know the answer’s in the sky?

The sky. Half of it was a dark blue, growing darker and darker as the sun slid beneath the mountains. The other half was a crisp orange, broken up by the darker clouds hanging slightly above the horizon.

“If you believe you’ll let your spirit fly”

And for one of the first times in my life, I was completely happy. I was with four friends who I consider my family to this day. The scenery and the weather could not have been any better.

“Can’t you feel the heavens open wide?”

It seemed almost unreal. I caught myself thinking of a brown haired brown eyed woman who was hundreds of miles away, and how much I wished that we could be sharing this moment together. I look off into the beautiful sky, only thinking of her more and more.

“Fool the answer ain’t in the sky”

The answer sure is not in the sky. It is not in our heads. While this was my favorite memory, I had spent much of the time sitting there not in the moment but in my head. I wished that my current girlfriend could have been there. I wished that the moment would not have ended. I wished and I thought, but that is not what these moments are for.

“It’s in the heart of a child”

It is moments like this that you need to behave childlike. Children are often lost in the moment. They see things as they are, not as what they could or should be. I should have focused more on the way the sweet cigar smoke twirled out of my mouth, looking like spirits chasing each other back to the heavens. I should have focused on the strangely comfortable bark that we sat on and picked at as we sat, not saying a word. The smell of the gentle breeze. The coolness of my ice cold drink on my sunburned body. Eventually, I became like a child. It did not take technology to make me happy. It did not take something I did not have in that moment to make me happy. My heart was full because I was drinking and smoking with family, listening to gentle music that seemed to roll over the hills, or roll over us like the smoke.

“The beauty is there inside”

While I wish that I could have been more in the moment, many details still stuck with me, but one did so more than any other. It was the moment I realized that I had found my second family. Sitting in a beautiful environment, smoking and drinking and listening to my favorite music would have been enough to make anyone happy, but the real reason this memory sticks out is those friends. We sat ignoring any distractions from the moment. We did not have to say a word to know what we were all thinking. The cool air began to get colder, but we stayed, in our shorts and tank tops, disregarding comfort for the experience. The sun finally set. The sky darkened and the girls asked for us to head back to the lake house. We moved almost silently, in awe of the vast power and beauty of the moment. Then again, moments like this are rare to find, but friends like these are even more rare to find.

Creative Memoir 2-

 

“Pull it a little bit harder” he said as I grunted, leaning back with all of my strength. “Just a little bit more and I can fit the screwdriver in!” he exclaimed. “’There” he said, stepping away.

“It took you long enough… there’s no way that it was that hard to fit a screw driver behind the door of your old worn out jeep” I said sassily.

“Well maybe if you actually worked out, it would have taken only a few seconds” he retorted, making me laugh.

After a few brief moments, I had to ask, “What’s next? Do you know how to do this part?”.

“Uuuhhh… we can figure it out as we go” he said as he unfolded the wire hanger. “Push that back, and I’ll try and hook this around the lock”.

I pushed the screw drive back, opening the top part of the door. He slid the hooked end of the hanger down, quickly wrapping it around the lock, and pulled up. “AH HA!” he yelled as we opened his door, reaching in for his keys.

“Well, that was easy” I laughed after realizing it only took two people under five minutes to learn how to break into a car.

“With older cars like this, it’s pretty easy. The locks have divots you can lock onto. Newer cars take a lot more skill. We walked back up, through the parking lot, towards the dining hall. “Wouldn’t it be funny if we moved Gabriel’s car” he said, receiving a hearty laugh from me. But with that laugh, a seed was planted…

 

 

The very next day, Gabriel, the pompous, self-conceited head floor proctor of the entire boy’s dormitory, shoved one of my friends in the shower and turned it on. My friend had all of his clothes and technology on him as he got soaked.

I know he has no common sense, but I didn’t think he was possibly that stupid I thought for the entire next day as I tried to calm my incredibly angry friend down. Finally, after a few days, my soaked friend began to think rationally again.

“We have to get back at him” he said, clenching his fists slightly.

“Let me go get Landon, I think we have an idea” I said, the seed blooming into a whole forest in my head.

Within minutes, the three of us headed back down to the parking lot. After we found his car, we effortlessly broke in. We knew how to jam it into neutral in case we needed to tow the vehicle, but we could not find a tow hitch or any steel hooks at all. While Landon and I were searching the front of the car, we hear our friend Marco scream, “JACKPOT”. We quickly run around to see what he is so excited about.

“Did you find a hitch?” Landon asked excitedly.

“No… better!” Marco replied as he came out from underneath the back of Gabriel’s car, holding up a spare set of keys. Needless to say, we took the keys and drove his old Honda Civic into the center of a field, making it visible from quad. We almost got expelled, but thankfully we had received approval from several of the school’s faculty, meaning that we were relatively safe. It truly is amazing how one single thought can be planted like a seed that blooms into a memory that everyone involved will cherish forever.

Creative Memoir 3-

“Oh my gosh, Brian, have you heard about the break in that happened a few doors down?” whispered Shelley, the cute but small blonde next door. She was peeking over the thin white fence that separated us.

“Yeah… I’m kind of worried. This is a good neighborhood. That kind of thing usually doesn’t happen here” I said as I took a sip of my cool dark drink, giving me some energy. “Have you heard how Becky is doing?” Becky was the girl whose house got broken into. She was a strong, outdoorsy girl with messy blue hair.

“I heard they only stole her keys, so it’s really not that big of a deal… it’s just scary that it could happen here” said Shelley.

“That’s not too bad” I said, knowing that this was not the end of these break-ins…

 

After I had finished my drink, I headed to bed. I was tired… I am old after all. My tan skin seemed to glow in the darkening evening sky. The last thing I remember before the incident was laying down, thinking that I should move my spare keys from underneath the doormat.

“BOOM!”

A loud crash woke me up. I was too mortified to even make a sound or to move. I could see a screwdriver being used to pry open my door. They wedged open the top with it and reached their hand in to open it even more. “What can I do… What CAN I DO?” I thought as I just laid there, paralyzed by fear, waiting for my fate.

“Oh we’re going to get him so good” I heard them laugh quietly as they slid a wire hanger down the door to unlock it. After a few brief moments, they got it. Two of them ran in, wearing white shirts, khakis and red ties… like some sort of hit men. I knew my time had come. Shadows told me that there were others searching the perimeter of my house, for what I could not understand. I stayed silent and tried to pretend that I was asleep. Maybe they would take what they wanted and leave me in peace. But that was not their plan…

I watched as the door to my room creaked open. The dark figures walked in slowly. I saw the knives clipped into their pockets. “Why are they not even armed? Are they going to hurt me? If so, why would they come in and not even have their knives out?” I thought as they creeped closer and closer. I felt a cold hand grip my wrist and pull me out of bed, standing me straight up. “Come with us now” he said, but I wouldn’t get myself to move. After a brief tussle, I heard one of the criminals outside yell, “JACKPOT”. I froze as he came in holding the keys to my house. All of the sudden I fell into a blurr and seemed to just move with them. The fear that I had felt earlier was gone. I felt nothing. No emotions. I was just moving to survive. I vaguely remember being dragged out of the neighborhood, hardly awake, paralyzed with fear. They took me out to an open field in plain view, and dropped me. The leaders who entered the house first sat me up and stared at me. He waited for me to realize where I was then said. “It’s not about you. It’s never been about you. It wasn’t even about Becky… it’s all about the game” He said with a laugh as he stood up and threw my keys at my face, turned around, and left, laughing with all of his cronies. I still don’t understand, to this day, why they did this, but after that, they were never caught breaking in to anyone’s houses ever again…

Gabriel, my owner came by, tears streaming down his face. “I can’t believe that they would ever do anything like this, not to me” he sobbed as the headmaster of the school stood behind him. He was livid that anyone could ever do something so heinous to Gabriel, but at the same time, you could see him smiling. Gabriel had a reputation of being very self-righteous, so it must have been nice to see him get humbled by a few sixteen year old students. After calming down a bit, the headmaster and Gabriel got in me, put the keys in my ignition, and drove me back to the Monastery parking lot, where it would be safe. It wasn’t my home, but it was the only way I could know that I was safe. It’s hard being a car when you are surrounded by hooligans like Nick Schweers and Landon, two of the main culprits.