Introduction

Welcome to my Gateway portfolio! You’ll be able to explore an archive of a few things, including an essayette, blackout poetry, a letter to self, and an author’s annotated version of a letter. My fully-realized project is a time capsule of three genres that I’d never tried, in response to an email I wrote a year ago. It intentionally explores themes like time, memory, updates, and the self throughout our lives. I wanted to craft such an elaborate response to this letter because when you really think about it, rereading letters and old writing is the closest thing you can get to traveling through time and meeting your other selves. What I hoped to achieve in annotating and building and vandalizing this untouched old draft, was not just a reaction, but a conversation – a dance with my past self, if you will. And in this attempt at interacting with her, to discover and examine the relationship between past, present, (and future) selves and whether there are parts that stay, remain, or depart. It felt like the writing process fostered community and collaboration with my different selves and across time – which is something we don't usually do. Throughout the semester, I kept coming back to Austin Kleon’s idea of writing as a form of play, and wanted to explore interaction with my original piece in as many ways as possible. Doing each experiment just made me want to delve deeper into each genre – and so I got a little ambitious and made my final a collection of all three genres. The essayette was also a genre experiment because my writing usually runs long, so the flash essay challenged me to stay within its conventions while still keeping my style. I noticed that it was really hard to know what to say in the letter – like I was putting pressure on myself to meet up to my past self’s expectations: Was this worth reading for them? If I was writing a whole letter to myself – the hardest and easiest letter I’ve ever had to write – what was the dazzling insight I would drop? But amidst the research process, I came across something that Lorde said about how her album Solar Power was one of those in between albums, and that’s okay, because we need those works too. I was floored by this. It takes a lot of courage to say that, and I think I’m constantly feeling the pressure to improve linearly in writing, like my best should always be what comes next. The fact that Lorde was aware and transparent about how she knew this album might not be as well-loved, but still, that didn't stop her from experimenting with a different genre of music, made this new side of her more refreshing, all the more compelling, and able to connect to as a listener. I hope that my letter will come off that way. I loved writing the annotated version of my email, because I probably wouldn’t run into an opportunity to do so, since the genre usually indicates success status, and takes on a tone of self-importance. The kind that's bestowed by experience, post-hit. It’s so interesting to think that certain genres are only meant for certain people to try, and likely not for many years down the line, when I might not even remember nor care, so I thought, why not now? Drafting the annotations kind of reminded me of my Creative Writing tutorial last semester and old online writing communities I used to be a part of, where I would write disclaimers in the comments section of my docs or react all over other people’s drafts. And I love this idea of vandalizing another piece of writing, which blackout poetry as graffiti also fit really well into. I primarily wrote as if addressing my past self, and this affected what I chose to write about in each annotation. Having a guiding question was both helpful and felt hindering, but in a good way, because it didn’t feel like I was simply making comments with no purpose but just to point out something on a google doc, but instead creating an actual annotated version of something worth publishing. Trying out multiple genres has been making me reevaluate my goals as a writer / creator and consider how I can combine writing with other interests or forms of art. Broadening and blurring that scope is a newfound goal of mine that I’m trying to focus on for the rest of my time at U-M (and probably + hopefully beyond!) In the fall, I’ll be taking both a screenwriting, hybrid genre, and research paper class! This class made me more curious about the possibilities of what I can create and write, and I'm starting to see it all as more exciting than daunting (trying at least).