Owen's Writing Week 1

Increasingly it has been suggested that I get my name as a writer out to the public. Ideas of what I could showcase have varied from person to person, but ultimately it came down to my desire to highlight my writing ability as it has evolved since the begining, through my decision to major in Creative Writing at Knox College, my eventual graduation, and any further works from now until whenever.

My initial goal for this blog is to update it once a week. Early in the blog's life these updates will largely revolve around my own works, things that were written while attending Knox. As the life of the blog evolves I expect to expand into other ventures, like book and movie reviews. With each of these updates there will likely be one or two expository posts (before and/or after the week's actual post) that will give you, the reader, a bit of insight regarding where my mind was when I wrote the piece as well as my reactions to them now.

I will be frank. Many of the posts, especially early, will consist mainly of works that I consider un-publishable. It must be said, though, that I don't necessarily believe 'un-publishable' means 'bad'. I will admit that some of these works were put aside in the middle of edits and, as such, are probably riddled with grammatical errors, but that doesn't mean they never had promise. Simply put, for reasons that changed from piece to piece, there were subject or concept issues that I was either not ready to tackle or felt weren't worth the time invested.

With that in mind I will begin with this week's, and the first of many, 'Owen's Writing' blog entries.

"Special Education"

My first work is from a separate blog that I started in July of 2008. It is my attempt at something called NaNoWriMo. If you don't know, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. Normally held in November, I decided, along with my sister, that November was not a good month for us that year. We decided, instead, that July was a more appropriate, and on July 1st we began writing.

The goal of NaNoWriMo, as their website indicates, is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. That's approximately 1,666 words a day (for comparison purposes, this post along with the previous post equals about 470 words and is about one, single spaced, Times New Roman 12pt. font Word page). The idea is to simply plow through the initial writing process.

At times the work got away from me and I lost control over the actions of the characters (hence the cautionary Adult Content warning) but overall it was an enjoyable experience. You can read some of my reactions to the work in the blog's last entry, titled 'Author's Statement'.