K.

Paige Burchard

Multigenre Project ​Reflection

I completed a multigenre project as an undergraduate. It was a very poignant time in my

life and it felt appropriate to complete a time capsule. I had just gone through a breakup, Trump

was recently sworn in as president and I was nearing my senior year of college. It was a time

worth saving and a time worth looking back on. Approaching this project in 2020 it seemed time

to bottle up time again. First, I took time and opened up the last capsule and spent time thinking

about how I have changed from 2017. The first two pieces I wrote came from this reflection,

Hard and Letter to My Anxiety. Then I began to think about what I want to save what I want to

capture from these periods. I had been working and thinking about pieces on adopting Arlo, my

dog, or on changing jobs because of a hateful administration. I thought about writing more

pieces about my anxiety and how it affects my life.

But then COVID-19 happened and everything was sidetracked. I read more than I wrote

and I Zoomed way more than I ever thought I would. I started seeing families create time

capsules of their Coronavirus experience. Because it was all I could think about, all anyone

could think about, I devoted two pieces to this.

I did not do a lot of editing of these pieces. It felt more appropriate to keep them raw.

When I think about the types of writing I create and publish (not emails and notes) I do a lot of

editing. Through this process of leaving my writing raw, I learned a lot about my voice as a

writer. I started seeing how the things I read were influencing this voice.

As a writing teacher, I clearly see the benefit of writing without editing. Because I was

writing to myself and for myself, this project felt like “low stakes writing.” There was no pressure

to edit and no word count to fulfill. In my classroom, I want to help other writers develop their

voice by offering more time for these low stakes writing opportunities.