Your journal entry should briefly summarize your experience of the looping activity. How did it go? What happened during the activity?
Your entry should also articulate a primary insight that came from the looping activity. We’ll discuss the primary insight more soon, but for now think about it as the main point you came to at the end of the looping activity.
Lastly, your journal entry should critique the looping activity as an inventional tool. How was it helpful? How was it unhelpful? Would you use it for other writing tasks? Why or why not?
The looping activity offered me a new way of brainstorming that I had never tried before. The task was to free write about a topic, read through it, and free-write again using the main idea from the last one. I appreciated this exercises’ ability to push me to think on the spot, but with this, came my tendency to veer way off-topic. I realize that this is a common thing to do, because the assignment itself forewarned me. I was surprised by how effective this was in encouraging me to generate new concepts. This forced me to expand upon an idea, even though I had no clue where I was going with it at first. That can be intimidating, but sometimes cultivate new, and fresh ideas. Truthfully, It taught me to think as I write, instead of thinking first, writing last. Writing without preparation could potentially result in nonsense, but at the same time, is a great way to catch any ideas you have on the spot so they don't wander away, unrecognized.
The primary insight that arose from performing this activity was how I believe now, I could rewrite my Descriptive Narrative Essay with better descriptive elements. This was the main goal of the assignment. I also came to the conclusion that writing about my struggle with depression (something emotional) rather than something physical inherently made things more difficult. If I were to write about a day at the park, there are many external components to describe, such as the people, the weather, colors, sounds, etc. What I chose to write about created a challenge to describe emotions, which was more difficult than something right in front of you, yet still attainable. There were, of course, parts of the story where I described the building where I was taken into therapy, and the screening tests I took to diagnose my mental illness, but the majority was left for me to describe feelings. This can be tough because humans sometimes don't know how to articulate how they feel. I mean...that's why we have therapists, right?
This concept came to me while doing this looping exercise, and I am very pleased with it because now I have another topic to discuss in the Literacy Narrative Assignment. Without this activity, I may have never come to this realization. It was difficult to spit out ideas on the spot, and expand on an idea without knowing if it is going to be worth it. However, I will probably use it when doing other writing tasks because it is an excellent method for brainstorming. Let's be honest, not every idea will be a good one, and that’s okay. It was a bit challenging for me to realize that this is an exercise, not a final draft. I somehow expect every single creative thought I have to be good, but the reality is that that’s not possible, and doing this exercise helped me get the weeds (the bad ideas) out, while also creating the potential for new ones.
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