Twitterive Prologue
As an English Literature major and a writer who, I’ll admit, tends to overwrite, I found this assignment extremely challenging and intriguing. Not only did it challenge us to use figurative language in describing our experiences, but we also had to abide by Twitter’s character limit. In this way, boring tweets such as “getting a cup of coffee,” which have little value or business in a narrative, became elusive descriptions of “searing black liquid” and “stark white porcelain, cool to the touch.” Although I had been recording basic occurrences in my life such as riding the elevator, by using figurative language to describe these banal events I was able to create a sense of mystery and abstractness.
As I looked back on the tweets I had composed for this assignment, I noticed a few recurring motifs. The first and foremost was a sense of monotony and boredom with everyday life. In more than one tweet, I used vocabulary such as “incessant” and “continuously” and complained frequently about routine responsibilities such as going to class and working. Another motif that I noticed in my tweets was being uncomfortable. In one tweet, I describe how “the chill leeches through my clothes” in the snow and, in another, I state that “my stomach lays on the floor: sick” after riding the elevator. This motif of being uncomfortable was usually compounded with a theme of fear, as it was in the elevator tweet.
|
I am both surprised and not surprised by the ominous and dark tone that my tweets provide. On one hand, my creative writing has always tended to be more dystopian. I have read far too many books to be much interested in “fairy-tale endings” anymore. On the other hand, however, I am truly shocked that my creative writing style was able to transcend in the world of technological writing. To be quite honest, I had always thought of multi-modal, technology-based writings as a bit below good ol’ hand-to-paper writing.
This assignment proved me wrong in that respect. In order to adhere to the rules of Twitter, I had to think about and weigh each word that I used. I wanted my audience, largely those who are not enrolled in this class, to understand or at least be intrigued by what I was writing. In this way, this assignment allowed me to practice Core Value 6 of the Writing Arts major which reads, “Writing Arts students will understand the impact evolving technologies have on the creation of written texts.”
This assignment proved me wrong in that respect. In order to adhere to the rules of Twitter, I had to think about and weigh each word that I used. I wanted my audience, largely those who are not enrolled in this class, to understand or at least be intrigued by what I was writing. In this way, this assignment allowed me to practice Core Value 6 of the Writing Arts major which reads, “Writing Arts students will understand the impact evolving technologies have on the creation of written texts.”
|