I should have known this was going to be a wild adventure as soon as my origin piece brainstorming list started looking ambitious (even to me). Realizing I had no idea what I was signing myself up for, I tried to play it safe. I sought to plan, for every single origin piece option, what my potential three experiments would be. I wanted something that piqued my interest, but I also wanted something whose projects would be straightforward and align with my creative interests and skills, even if the exact genres would be new to my making. (Un)fortunately, the origin material I had been leaning toward (based on which experiments I was planning to make for it) got derailed over the course of that exploratory period, and the resulting decisions changed the course of where I thought this experiment adventure would take me.

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Though I had been planning to use a poem I wrote a few years ago as my origin piece (because I thought it would make a cool lyric poem/video), the blog posts from past Minor in Writing Gateway students dissuaded me. Several of those posts warned current students against picking origin material based on what experiments they thought would flow smoothly from their selected piece. Instead, they advised students like myself to go with where our true passion seemed to be and with the origin material we perceived to have the most momentum going forward. This inkling of another origin piece was solidified when the pitch meeting with T and some of my other classmates concluded with everyone rallying behind a different option: a novel I had started for middle-school-aged readers.

 

The only problem with this selection was that it opened the door to a wide range of experiments, and the experiments I began to outline for this piece were shot down by T numerous times. Over and over, I dreamt up options I thought would be fun but still manageable (like a Buzzfeed-style “Dos and Don’ts” article in the main character’s quirky voice), but T’s visions for my experiments were more extravagant and time-consuming than what I was hoping to undertake. To a certain degree, they were also less familiar to me, and that made me nervous. I was concerned about how the research process would go, and I was very wary of the workload and timetable that had been set before me for the completion of all these experiments.

 

Ironically enough, my very first experiment was the one I thought would be the most challenging to create – purely because I had never heard of this “sound essay” thing T had suggested. My anxiousness about it only grew when the research process proved nearly fruitless; apparently, no one else had heard of the “sound essay,” either. But this roadblock taught me how to be a better researcher. Instead of semi-mindlessly running a Google search and finding some website titles/previews that looked promising, I had to dig. I had to use what little I already knew about this mysterious genre (from hearing T describe it as a story or experience conveyed through sounds instead of words) to do close readings of each of the sources I explored and discern which pieces of information might be applicable to my project.

 

The second experiment’s challenges came more from the software side of things. I set out with the best intentions for my book trailer, but my platform of choice – Powtoon, an accessible animation tool – proved to be a promising-looking apple with a hidden razor blade inside. It was all fun-and-games with the free version of my account until I realized I would have to make compromises about my content. For instance, the characters I selected for the book trailer animation were not the ones I wanted to go with. Instead of being able to customize them to how the characters actually looked in the story (that would require the paid version), I had to settle for “close enough.”  Furthermore, once the trailer was completed and my hole was already dug, I realized that Powtoon had secretly prevented me from ever downloading my video – that is, unless I wanted to pay for it. After trying to jump through hoops to get the video off of Powtoon’s website without paying, I learned a few things about technology affordances (from one of my classmates, who taught me how to screen-record videos) as well as sharpened my adaptation skills when it comes to creative projects embracing whatever it is they are/become.

 

My third experiment (a book website) was the massive catch-all project, and I was terrified of the extremely condensed timeline because I didn’t feel I would have enough time to complete everything with the detail and breadth I wanted to. As seemed to be the theme with this entire experiment cycle, my best-laid plans turned out to be misguided, flawed, or thwarted at practically every step along the way. In this case, I had saved the biggest and longest project for last – knowing that it was the culmination project and that I should want to know how the experiment process works before undertaking something so large, but forgetting that the last experiment would be given the least amount of work-time of the three. From this lack of wiggle room, I was forced to learn how to operate Google Sites (my chosen platform) as quickly as possible. When Google Sites proved to be more limiting (as far as design) than I was hoping, I also learned to trust the sage voices of T and the other people I found in my research. They had all said to use WordPress, but I had seen Google Sites as the easier, faster, and more convenient of the two, so I went with my own understanding instead of that of experienced professionals. Thankfully, even though the website started out as a bit of a frustrating mess, the power of detailed research came through, and I had a lot of direction on how to make what I needed to make (even within my constraints), which further emphasized the importance of good research.

 

With the third experiment complete, the final project had to be chosen, and here I ran into the same question as always: how much effort and time did I want to put into it? At this point in the semester, I was getting really tired of these experiments, and I just wanted to be done. Since I had been developing extremely thorough samples for my projects, my book trailer was basically done. I just needed to add a book cover and fiddle around some more with the platform, and then that experiment would be complete. But T had other plans. She reminded me of what I had been planning from the beginning – that the book website (the only one of my original experiment suggestions to survive to the final cut) would serve as the hub for my other two experiments and a bunch of other book info and celebrations. The book website was the natural progression of things, the natural final project – not the book trailer. So, despite all the extra work it would entail, I undertook the task of “fully realizing” my Google Sites website. Through that project, I learned about perseverance, integrity of work, and pushing myself beyond my personally set boundaries.

 

In the end, I loved each of my experiments (at least once I got going on them), but it would be misleading if I glossed over how challenging the entire experiment cycle was for me. I was thrilled to learn a lot and try my hand at different genres and mediums, but I also feel like I was bad at setting boundaries for myself or finding clear guidance about how to go about the entire process. Everything just felt rushed, all the time, with only a few days of breathing room interspersed throughout. Additionally, I spent a lot of time perfecting little pieces instead of looking big-picture, and that might have contributed to the timetable stress I was experiencing. If “not being a perfectionist” is something to learn, I think this project stressed that aspect of my life to me, but I also like the way my perfectionism pushed me to create cool things. Even though the hour count might not show in how the final project and the other experiments look, I did spend a ton of time on my projects, and I’m kind of proud of that.

 

The final things this experiment cycle taught me involved learning who I am as a writer. I learned that I enjoy creating new things and dabbling in new communication forms. I learned that I’m not just a poet, or a novelist, or a “creative” writer; I’m also an experimenter, a hard worker, and a storyteller. I learned that I can create quality digital-writing documents, and that just because I’m interested in novels and poetry and other literature-based writing styles doesn’t mean I can’t also be interested in digital-based writing styles. Furthermore, I learned that those two sides of my writing can meet in the middle, such as with each of my experiments being a digital take on a literature-based work. In the future, then, I think I’d like to take an even deeper/closer look at the intersection between these two spheres of writing. With the technological world we live in today, as well as the increasingly tech-integrated society of our future (and, possibly, the increasingly tech-based communication tasks of my future employment), I feel that there’s still a lot left to explore. I’m excited to see what future experiments I might find myself pursuing, and I hope they provide just as many opportunities for growth as this experiment cycle.