An Introduction

     As an illustration major the whole “writing” thing rarely falls under my prerogative, at least in so far as sitting in front of a blank screen and watching it fill up with words, which is a shame. It’s something I’ve always enjoyed doing, and the reason I took this course was part of my desperate attempt to not allow my writing muscle to atrophy (it’s far too late for the science and math muscles at this point). At the moment the most I’m exercising in that regard is in my independent work, where I’m writing a comic about a manic, destructive architect girl and her pet fox fighting the powers that be in an attempt to be the greatest builder there is.
     There’s a great deal of overlap creatively, I’m finding, between my illustration work and my writing work; at least as much as how the process goes. My best stuff in either case has been the material I just let fall out of my skull; as a student I find I work best under pressure, where I know every word I type counts. If given too much time to faff about and plan, invariably I start overthinking, and the overall work suffers. Perhaps the strongest example of this came in my freshman year of high school where a paper I’d crammed out the night before it was due wound up being copied and distributed around the class, as the teacher said it gave him a new way of understanding the character I was writing about. Meanwhile, the stuff I slave over and ponder about for hours ends up being drivel.
     As far as my previous academic experiences go, I’d have to say my best one in writing was in my junior year of high school, where I had one of the most interactive and engaging teachers I’ve ever known—plus he shared my birthday, which is irrelevant but still no doubt the primary reason I enjoyed it. Basically the way he taught was very much based on discussion and getting your point across. He was focused on you coming away from any given paper with your brain meats flowing, rather than filling an arbitrary quota for the number of characters in a given assignment. He actually had word count maximums as opposed to minimums, which was a great way to avoid filler and redundancy. It was a great time where one could joke about masturbation and not be met with a stare of disapproval and/or disbelief.
     My worst experiences tend to be the classes that focus heavily on reading books that I cannot invest myself in. The year before my best academic experience I took an AP Literature course that wound up being intolerable. I enjoy pulp literature—flighty fantasy fun with swordfights and revenge plots a la Count of Monte Cristo—but when you’re talking literature literature in the “English upper classes spend a lot of time doing not much at all except have uninteresting romantic drama” category, my eyes glaze over and I forget my name for a few seconds, indeed as I did throughout most of that year.
     Anywho, that’s just a bit about me. Also I have curly hair and I enjoy old video games more than the average person.