Beixi Li
/investigation into self
From Memoirs to Blogs
Our first prompt was to choose a writing that we had previously completed, and to turn it into something aimed at a different audience.
Choose a piece of writing.
I hemmed and hawed, opened up just about every writing file available, and almost crashed my computer in the process. There were essays about the Odyssey, responses to short stories, analytical philosophy papers, persuasive business memos. But having looked through my entire archive of literary work from the moment I got this computer, there wasn’t anything that I wanted to work with again so much as my reflections.
Having had a year without looking at the memoirs that I had written Sophomore year, I wondered whether, at the time, I truly understood or believed the messages that I was writing in them. I wonder if I, even now, truly understand or believe the messages that I continue to pump out on word documents, on online portfolios, on blogs. But the message is real. Every step of the way I've seen how it impacts my life even further.
My message: Stop, look at the present and absorb the details. Look at how beautiful everything is when we’re not rushed, hurried, and stressed.
Take this time for myself to evaluate myself so that I can figure out where I want to go.
I wrote this message a year ago, and now I wanted to rewrite it for an audience that wasn’t me. I wanted to stretch my writing, play with different genres, different voices, and different mediums.
It was going to be a challenge.
My goal was to create two short stories out of two of the three memoirs I had chosen, and to write each story in a different voice so that it would also seem like they came from two separate authors.
I was excited.
I was curious.
I was stumped.
Two main problems were blocking my way. Where before I could be as expressive and reflective as I wanted, creating a story required a plot and characters. The message couldn’t just be said; it needed to be shown. Characters couldn’t all act the same way. What was I going to do?
Regarding plot and characters, below are the steps that I eventually took.
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Plot
I couldn’t just say, “Stop and look around you. Take time for the present.” I needed to create an environment, a tone, and an interaction that would embody my message. I chose to focus on “Remember Me” and a combination of “It is” and “Is it Imperative?” for my two stories.
Lost Battle was going to be a more humorous approach with a kicker of a message that was supposed to sink in at the end. The tone is playful, mocking all those people who were trying so hard to get into the group. But then we backtrack and realize that we were once those people ourselves, and still are.
Writing this piece, I really needed to be in the right mood. I couldn’t just pop out quirky language and witty words anytime of day. It had to be playful enough to read, but heavy enough to be taken seriously. I’ve included one of the original drafts of the stories to the left and have contrasted it with my final work.
Initially, I had used a little more fiction and tried to create an ending that would replicate the whole idea of not even remembering anyone in the crowd. But as I revised and edited and talked to peers, I realized that sometimes the truth is even more poignant and so I brought Chuck back into the picture, and had him perform the role he executed in real life. He mocked our process, told the truth, and caused me to look back at myself.
His character is the message. His is the voice that says what the author is thinking and although never stated explicitly, I wanted the story to end on a somewhat abrupt note so that you’re left with a realization, and just your own thoughts on how to process it.
For this piece, I focused on events pulling the story along, having flashbacks and flashforwards between past and future to emphasize the difference between what we value now and what we learn to value later.
I brought in real life examples of people who had given speeches, shared experiences, and wanted us students to think of another way to define success.
I struggled with what was too much detail and what wasn’t enough.
I was trying to describe a mother and son relationship when I’ve never been a mom, hopefully it was convincing.
I was jumping through time, and bouncing through opinions, but hopefully, through time and space, the message remained clear.
I was used to jumping time in reflections, but in stories, I needed to be much more explicit. Writing from my own memories, sometimes I forget others don’t have the same memories or the same context to understand my theme. I had to show them the feel of the situation, the gravity of the questions, and the realness of the situation.
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Characters
Characters were sometimes even more difficult because as I wrote, they all started to sound like me, act like me, and probably, if they were real, look like me. How could I create someone else when it was coming out of my own imagination?
Going to the Sweetland Center for Writing and doing a workshop with a counselor was mind blowing. He had so many questions that stretched my stories in so many directions that I was left with way too many options. But the advice that really stuck in my mind was his method for creating well-rounded characters.
-- Base them off people we know in real life, people we know really well. We can oftentimes anticipate how this person would respond to situations, and can base our characters off if them so that we’re creating someone different from us, but someone we have enough of a grasp about to create credible characters with. I started thinking about friends, family, and all of a sudden, these strangers on paper soon stood up and started walking, talking, and making their own decisions.
Contextually, I was writing in an entirely new genre. Rhetorically, I had no idea how to communicate in stories. Through trial and error, write and rewrite, I’ve started on the path to understanding how to develop a plot and how to develop essential, believable characters. It’s by no means a finished product and very much a work in progress, but it's a work that has opened my thinking, and hopefully, yours too.
Throughout this class, we’ve blogged constantly and have been encouraged to follow blogging sites. One of my treasure finds was www.humansofnewyork.com. The visuals paired with the brief, unique stories got me thinking that this was really something. This was taking the ordinary and making extraordinary.
I talked to Emily about it and we joked, not really joked, about making a version of it for Ann Arbor.
Then the remediation project prompt came up and we knew what our project was going to be.
A blog for Humans of Ann Arbor, or some version of that title.
The tricky part was figuring out a way to capture our two different projects and messages, and combine them. Emily is gifted with dry humor, she satirizes and critiques in the latest social media platforms with fewer words, but with heavy impact. I’m a little more long winded and err towards reflections and more prose.
The interesting thing is that our messages were tied together.
Emily focused on not taking ourselves too seriously. We all think our current stage in life is the most important. But growing up a few years later, our perspectives change drastically.
I have always focused on living in the present to figure out who we are and to not let ourselves get too caught up in a future we feel we can’t control.
And so our theme is: look at the present, look around you, and listen. There are so many people with more experiences and more knowledge, it’s amazing what you can learn from them.
The two questions we decided to ask each person we snagged on the street, after much consideration and deliberation were:
“What inspires you?”
“What’s a moment you wish you had appreciated more?
The depth, range, and quality of answers that we got was astonishing. Strangers on the street would stop in the cold, breath puffing into the air, and give us a part of themselves. No one ever declined to answer and we were blown away by what we learned from walking the streets of Ann Arbor for even just a few hours.
The road to our Ann Arbor Awesome page was not direct and not showered with rainbows. We changed endless platforms, went through multiple drafts of questions, and struggled with the different ways to present our information.
But what we’ve accomplished is incredible, it’s one of my proudest works in college, and has taught me more than I ever thought possible. We were able to do it in tandem because Emily and I are good at different things and we specialized. She focused on the pictures with her photographer’s eye, and I focused on the prose, capturing the quotes and bringing them to life.
To see how our project changed step by step and to see examples of the different problems we faced, click the links on the right to share in our journey to create Ann Arbor Awesome.
Throughout our project, we changed platforms multiple times and experimented in any way possible. If you're interested, take a look to see some of the things we considered.
One of the things I constnatly struggled with was finding a way to capture the quotes correctly. We wnated the site to be more visual based, but we also wanted the learning lessons from our friendly strangers to really stand out.
I mentioned Emily and my differnet writing styles. What was really interesting was to see how we absorbed a little bit of each others' styles by the end of this project.
The major project for our Writing 220 semester was a multi part project that asked us to start with a source piece, and then adapt it for other mediums and other audiences. My source writing was a series of memoirs written during Sophomore year of college that reflected on rushing through life and not living in the moment.
The first part of my project focused on repurposing these originals into works presented in a different light. I chose to turn my memoirs into two short stories that would make my story anybody's story. By casting it into a plot with characters other than the narrator, I hoped to bring these stories to life and to show people how relatable the message could be to everyone.
The second part of the project was called remediation, using a different medium to illustrate our writing. For this part, I worked with Emily Schell and we developed a blog, Ann Arbor Awesome. The goal of this blog was to meet strangers on the street and to ask them two questions to see the variety of answers that we got.
From this project, I've seen so many changes in my perspective, in my writing, and in how I reflect on myself. It's tested me beyond self constructed borders, and has asked me to be creative in communicating with writing. Through ups and downs, successes and challenges, it's been a journey from memoirs to blogs.