Traccye Starling

Name: Traccye Starling
Sex: Female
Age: 21
DOB: September 02, 1983
Location: Chicago, IL
Status: Dating
College: Millikin University
Hobbies: Physical Fitness, Counseling, Bike-riding, Dancing, Writing.
Other: "I enjoy long walks on the beach . . ."

NUTSHELL

A typical profile exemplifies a typical person. I extremely enjoy creative writing, and love freelance/ad hoc. I use physical exercise and writing as therapy. Yeah, reading is fun too; however, whenever I have time, I always go into my old storage chest (that parents buy for their students going away to college) of papers I have written Freshmen year in college. I realize that I have changed so much as a writer. Many people are afraid of change, but I embrace it, even if it's a turn for the worst; I truly believe that ALL things happen for the great of the GOOD, and this is Traccye Starling, in a nutshell.

POETICS

Can Writing Be Foreign To a Writer?

There have been pieces, if you will, of writing which I have written outside of the required class material. However, these pieces weren't necessarily for fun. I wrote lyrical love letters to my significant other or elegiac correspondences filled with feelings of regrets, doubts, and confessions for another. These pieces didn't really make me feel like a writer; they made me feel like a coward in some sense—a person who needed to express herself through words on paper in submission. Conversely, I would arbitrarily write journals of the way I felt for myself or for someone, however, there was nothing consistent. Nonetheless, there are pieces of which I have always thought to write but never really got around to doing so, therefore, many opportunities came forth in my creative writing courses of which I engaged to write my "imagined" pieces. Therefore, the creative pieces I have written thus far, have been inspired by a thought conceived way before its "required" birth.

INTRODUCION

My very first creative writing class (Intro to Creative Writing/Dr. Hancock) was the second semester of my freshmen year. I felt a bit intimidated because I was the only freshmen in my English class the previous semester, and one of three freshmen in, at that time, my current English class. All of the writers in that class were amazing and deep. I never referred to the people in that class as students, but as writers. I wanted to write something deep, something that was not in the norm for little ole' me, I wanted to write about passion, relationships, and pain. So I decided to write up a poetic short story. That poetic short story was the birth of Unforgettable Passions .

Unforgettable Passions was one of my most impressive pieces in my opinion. It was meant to be just one writing sample; a sample that was very poetic, sad, and a demonstration of the feelings of first person character/narrative, and contained intensity. This is how the first version started out.

Through a work shop for another class (Adv. Creative Writing/Dr. Shepherd), I decided to bring in Unforgettable Passions . I hadn't read it since Freshmen year. As I was reading it, I thought that it was quite humorous and couldn't believe that at the time I felt that this piece was suppose to be dramatic, sad, and interesting. I thought that the piece was quite hilarious. Therefore, before I had taken the piece to class, I changed the title to: " Unforgettable Passions, Another Soap Opera", I also made few more changes to add irony to make it more humorous. In class I read the piece aloud with such sarcasm in my voice, and my classmates and professor felt that the piece was very humorous as well. I really had fun with Unforgettable Passions , and thought that it was basically the end of the piece again, just like Freshmen year. After the revisions of the piece, a couple of students suggested that I write another piece so that they can find out what happened after the end. I thought about the idea for a while, but didn't really bank on doing so. For a project, I began to review the creative pieces I have written and I chose my favorite piece, which was, of course, " Unforgettable Passions , Another Soap Opera." I decided to take what I received from the workshop and expand Unforgettable Passions into a series. Dr. Shepherd wanted to know exactly how many pieces I was going to write for the project, hence I blurted out 12 pieces. Here's the first (revised) one.