Creative Writing Journals

This activity helped me in a way that we weren't told to use it for, but I did anyway. It helped me find and cut out a lot of the filler words in the story, as well as rephrase some things. I had "just" and "that" listed in the story so much that they were some of my top words, so I cut out as many as I could. Anyway, so for the first part, the top words in here are "Pablo," "back," "man," "Aunt," "train," "Maya," "away," "Missy," "said," "art," "eyes," "house," "supplies," etc. From this, I got that this train and going/getting away seem to be central to the story. Art seems to be a theme to it, and "eyes" comes up many times as well. Art/painting is definitely the spine of it. I was able to expand a lot of it around this idea and connect almost all of my scenes to the theme of art and painting, with the exception of a few ...

Activity 1 I cut out as many scenes as I could, but a lot of it was Pablo’s internal dialogue that felt crucial to the story. I was able to cut down on a lot of it, but not that much. I think that even with these cuts, I’ll still include some of the the things I cut out in the story, although some of it did help. Here’s the first four pages with the cuts and the story in its current state: As Pablo stepped off the train, he set his briefcase down on the platform to stretch out his body. He was ready for a new beginning here, a fresh start to his life. He had planned to make a more dramatic move – maybe across the country. He had always wanted to live as one of those mysterious artists in New York. He could’ve rented an apartment there and began his new career, but he couldn’t afford it. Instead, he’d taken a train from Los Angeles to San Diego. Not too dramatic, but it could still make do He watched the other passengers pile off the train, dressed in casual attire, just as ...