Tag Archives: writing

student blogs

That’s a Wrap Take Care, All!

Our last class of the semester was both exciting and a little bittersweet. The potluck-style gathering gave us a chance to unwind and celebrate, while presenting our projects one final time made me reflect on how much we’ve all grown. As I shared my work, I felt like I should be further along, but I reminded myself that progress isn’t about perfection and that the project would eventually come together. I really valued everyone’s feedback, it sparked new ideas and gave me motivation to keep going, even with the work that still remains. I had originally started my project in WordPress, but it became challenging to manage, so I switched to a custom website at the last minute. It feels more secure and easier to work with, and I’m excited to see the project fully take shape.

This course has been an incredibly meaningful experience. It opened my eyes to how different electronic literature is from traditional storytelling. Working with it encouraged me to think beyond words on a page, taking into account design, interactivity, and user experience as part of the narrative. The process challenged me to be creative, problem-solve, and step outside of my comfort zone, particularly while developing and refining my final project. I’m grateful for the feedback, support, and ideas shared throughout the semester as they shaped my work in ways I didn’t anticipate.

As this journey comes to an end, I’m excited to continue building on what I’ve learned and see where these skills take me next. I can’t wait to finally finish my project and see it all come together. 

Wishing everyone the best of luck with their final projects and future endeavors, and wishing you all a safe, happy, and healthy holiday season!

student blogs

Last Post

Hey Everyone!

We made it to the end!

I am happy to report that my project is about 70% done. I am very excited about it.

The whole project takes place inside Google Sheets. It starts with a sheet with two links. One takes you to a website that allows you to generate scrolling text from the opening of Star Wars. The text is a suicide note from the protagonist. After that, you go back to the sheet to continue.

Next is the iceberg. There are x’s inside the boxes in the iceberg. When you click on one, it takes you to another page in the sheet. The things above the iceberg are things that are out in the open and the things below the iceberg are hidden by the protagonist.

There are different elements that I have used. There is prose about the protagonists life before their suicide. There are song lyrics that have been made into blackout poems with links to Youtube videos of the song. There are clips from anime. If you don’t know the source material, the clips seem out of place. For example, one clip is from an anime where the protagonist kills themselves and wakes up in a new world where everyone has wings, yet people who commit suicide have black wings.

I’m going to include one hidden thing. I am going to make a box behind the moon that links to a sheet. It will take all of the songs that are included in the piece and put them in order. There will be a note from the protagonist telling the reader that when they die, this is the playlist for their funeral.

The piece is meant to be confusing, maybe a little disorienting, and not fully understood in a narrative sense. There is no one reason why the protagonist commits suicide and I want the reader to see that. I guess the reader is going through the life of someone who committed suicide and trying to put all the pieces together.

student blogs

Finishing Touches

I hope everyone is moving forward with their respective projects. I am really looking forward to our last meeting on Monday, not only because it just brings me one day closer to completing my degree, but also because each project is so unique.

As far as my own project goes, I feel I am at about 70% done, so 5% less than what is required for Monday. I have most of the haikus written, just want to have seven more, so each section I have to organize it all has four haikus, plus each section’s landing page haiku. In total, I should have 24 haikus, all original to me. I’m really happy that these haikus are being put to use, as I have been writing them without knowledge of this project since the beginning of the semester.

So, I’m not sure if I will have all of the haikus written by Monday, but I have enough to give everyone an idea of how this project will look fully finished. I have the design of the website down, so even without all of the haikus posted there yet, you all will be able to get an idea as to how it will look.

The 5% that I really want to fill in before Monday is the inclusion of sound. Again, I’m not worried about this, as I found that website that contains thousands of free-use audio. So, it’s just a matter of finding ones that I like and inputting them. I’m not sure if I want to include sound of every page, as there is some overlap of the content of a couple of haikus being about the same bird. But, what if the reader doesn’t read both haikus? Well, I think I just answered my question, and I will have sound for every page.

In all, I will try to have the rest of those haikus written, but we’ll see. I do want to have some sounds in there. I might not have all of them, but having it for some of the pages is a definite. I have also begun carving out the narrative a bit and hyperlinked some pages to each other, but not all of them yet because I don’t have all of the haikus. I will have some examples of this for Monday, but I might not have all the pathways picked out just yet. Though, we’ll see how many haikus I can write this weekend.

student blogs

It’s going.

This project is finally going in a direction for better or for worse. After our class workshop, I felt that I had concepts of an idea but still nothing too concrete. Over the long weekend, I really sat down and though about potential ways to tackle this project and the type of story I wanted to tell. In the end, I feel that I now have my main idea fleshed out and ready to go. I want to make this project about people’s online identities and voice within a digital space. To achieve this, I wanted to make two blogs from the same “writer” that showcases their two wickedly different sides. One side is the professional scholar who works in academia, and the other a more casual version of the same writer. I want to showcase their two sides through two blogs from the writer. The quirk is that the “real” blog will be hidden within the “professional blog”.

            After I ironed that out, I began to really focus on building the two web pages. I have begun to work on WordPress to create and publish the two blogs. I am most familiar with WordPress (especially after taking two classes with Dr. Z). The more “casual” blog will take more time to build out since I want to place much more stylistic and personal element into it compared to the other one. I feel like I will be messing with the actual composition of the blog up until the finish line.  

 This week I plan to begin to start writing the actual blogs and building the “narrative”. I have some ideas of what will be in the blogs, and I feel like they will fall into place as I begin to actually write. I want this part to be finished by the weekend, so I am able to begin to edit and fix up the blogs. I feel like I am out of my element for this project honestly, but I want to see where it goes. We will see.

student blogs

E-lit Progress

I hope everyone enjoyed and had a safe and restful Thanksgiving. With the end of the semester only a few weeks away, I’ve been reflecting more deeply on how my project is taking shape.

Our workshop last week helped me clarify so much. I walked away with new perspectives and ideas that shifted how I’m approaching this piece. Even though I’ve had the core concept for a while, I still wasn’t sure how to structure or design it. Emily’s suggestion to experiment with Canva and/or Prezi really stood out to me since both platforms offer the kind of flexible, visual design that can suit a nonlinear story like mine.

Right now, I’m imagining the project as a multimedia scrapbook, an experience that blends essays, poems, audio recordings, voice notes, photographs, and other digital materials. A big part of my current process is collecting and curating all those multimedia elements I need, and figuring out how they speak to one another. I’m also working on an outline/timeline of activities to help me organize and remember those fragmented memories that will shape the narrative.

This is definitely an interactive and evolving process. Ideas keep feeding each other, and each new piece changes the shape of the overall story. With a project like this, it feels especially important to pause, think, and analyze every step so the final piece remains cohesive, emotional, and intentional.

student blogs

Almost Done!

Hey Everyone!

We are winding down to the end! I am happy that things are finally winding down, but I will miss class as well!

My final project is going really well. Last class was really inspiring for helping me hone in on my project. I have finished the visual part of the project and have been working on my outline. I have a basic idea of what my narrative is and the events that I will include in the project. My project will be based in poetry and it won’t be a straight forward narrative like my thesis. Instead, my project will be a series of events that are connected, yet the moments don’t spell out a concrete story.

The moments in my project will be memories of a deceased person and I think it serves the themes of the project better if the story is more abstract like All of Your Time Tossed Selves. I have decided to include an intro page that serves as a frame work for the story. I will let the reader know that the protagonist has killed themselves and that it is up to them to unravel the memories of what was. I think this will be a gentle entry for the reader into the work instead of no intro and letting the reader figure things out on their own.

I am finishing up my outline. Once the outline is done, I just need to create the poems for the piece. Some poems will be written by me and others will be blackout poems of songs. They will be “emo” songs from the mid 2000’s. These are the songs that many millennials, including me, have grown up on. The genre is called emo because these songs are highly emotional. Many emo bands sing about depression, anxiety, and heartbreak. The song that served as a large inspiration for this piece is called “Die Romantic” by the band Aiden. Link here: https://youtu.be/YbygUxEjnos?si=A8oqqqkXBTso4Mom

The song is very dark as it is about suicide and how there is romance in dying. The video shows the singer of the band following around different people who are thinking about self harming or committing suicide. Rather than tell then to keep going, his character is the finally whisper that causes the people in the video to commit the act. It almost subverts your expectations because a happy ending is more acceptable to society. But I think that’s the whole point of the video. It’s that there are people who think and feel dark things and the words they hear can be the final thing that push them over the edge. Rather than thinking in a negative light, it shows that we have the power to help people, but we also have the power to harm. And maybe if we look at someone who committed suicide, like the protagonist of my piece, we will see moments that seemed simple on the surface, but held deep seated trauma. And maybe we’ll start to see things in a different life and embody the phrase “Everyone is fighting a battle that you know nothing about.”

student blogs

ELIT Underway

To begin, I express my hope that everyone had a great holiday with friends and family. Thanksgiving break always comes at just the right time. For me, I always feel invigorated when I return after this specific long weekend. Not doing work for three days was great. Despite thinking about it from time to time, because I am quite the thinker-holic, it was great to be able to just forget about it after a moment because I didn’t have to do the work in that second. It could wait, and that it did. Well, until tonight.

I finally embarked on creating my website. By the recommendation of Sarah, I created a Wix website (am I allowed to mention a competing website creator? ha!). I am really enjoying how it is going so far. It looks just how I wanted it to: simple. And, even though I have used WordPress for quite some time now, I feel Wix is a bit easier to navigate. For some reason, I just could not get a handle on WordPress. Ever.

So, I came up with a title for the whole work: “Migration: An Interactive Flock”. I found it funny and thought using the word interactive would really just hit the nail on the head. Of course, it is not set in stone, but I do not see myself changing it. I created the home page, about page, and created the first page for the first haiku each reader will begin with. I also put up pages of two other haikus just to mess around and see what I would like those to look it, if I would want some kind of variation between the sections I laid out in my head, etc. I have said this to my peers in small groups, but I really would like my website to be simple like Twelve Blue was. There wasn’t much to Twelve Blue in terms of design; there was the text, the hyperlinks, and the reset button. There was no nonsense, and I liked that.

I will not link the website here even though it is currently published. I want you all to see the finished product. Or, at least the finished product at the end of the semester. I think I will keep up with maintaining this website and continuously adding to it because the whole thing is just cool.

I am also scouting for audios of the birds I write about to really immerse the reader. I think I can actually record some of the audio myself, but with birds at this time of year, I will definitely not be able to catch all of them. Though I do think I can record some audio for the more general haikus that talk about the weather and the overall season. In fact, I recorded a 15-second audio earlier this week of running water in a small creek to be used in conjunction with a haiku I already have. I think including sound will give the work a bit of an exciting edge.

My goal for tomorrow, Sunday, is to create pages for the rest of the haikus I have written so far (so, about 10). I will also play around with that audio and see how I would like it to appear on the page. Then, starting next week, I will really dial down on the audios and write more haikus; both of which I do not anticipate any hardship. I am looking forward to seeing this final project.

student blogs

E-lit Final Project: When Love Becomes a Click

I want my e-lit project to explore what happens to love when it exists mostly through screens. Not just the social media version, but the kind filled with missed calls, delayed responses, and the quiet anxiety of time zones that never quite line up. My idea centers around building an interactive fiction about a long-distance couple trying to survive the distance while still learning how to love each other in a digital world.

At the beginning of the experience, the reader would choose the characters’ love languages: words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time, physical touch, or gift-giving. These choices don’t just act as personality traits, they shape how the story unfolds. A character who values quality time might struggle more with distance than one who values words of affirmation. The story would unfold through text messages, voice memos, short poems, and shared music links. The reader wouldn’t just read the relationship; they’d participate in maintaining it.

Each chapter would present the reader with choices: Do you send a poem or a playlist? Do you wait to respond or call immediately? Do you confront immigration issues directly, or avoid them out of fear? These decisions lead the couple down different paths. Some endings might show diaspora love surviving systems designed to break it. Others might show how distance, lack of intimacy, or family pressure slowly tears them apart.

Visually and structurally, I imagine the project looking like a chat interface or message thread, where timestamps, loading dots, and unsent messages become part of the narrative something like “Hana Feels” or “Writers are not Strangers.” There would be moments of silence built into the story, blank spaces where users have to sit with the absence, simulating what long-distance actually feels like. Music and poetry would function as emotional artifacts, love letters in digital form, showing how intimacy adapts when touch isn’t possible.

This project matters to me as a person that had had to navigate a failed long-distance love, it isn’t just about romance. It’s also about borders, migration, cultural expectation, and emotional survival. By making it interactive, I want readers to feel the weight of choice,  to understand that love online is not passive consumption, but active, fragile construction. Every decision becomes political. Every message becomes evidence of care or neglect. In the end, some relationships will survive. Others won’t. But either way, the reader walks away understanding that love, like electronic literature, is shaped by systems, interfaces, and the emotional code we choose to write within them.

student blogs

E-Literature Final Project

It’s hard to believe we’re already approaching the end of another semester. As I reflect on my E-lit final project one thing becomes clear: memory isn’t linear. It jumps, fragments, and lingers in unexpected ways. That’s the kind of story I want to tell. This semester has shown me that digital literature can capture that messy, layered experience something print alone can’t fully achieve.

My project is inspired by Retratos Vivos de Mamá, a piece that moved me deeply with its mix of archival materials and the intimate way it explores mourning. I imagine creating a digital “darkroom” filled with memories connected to my sister’s car accident, my family, and the ways grief and healing have shaped us. Instead of a traditional narrative, users would explore floating images, letters, voice notes, and short written reflections. Each artifact would develop as the reader interacts with it slowly coming into focus.

I want this project to be something you don’t just read, but enter moving through it with curiosity, softness, and maybe even a little discomfort. The interactivity won’t be about solving puzzles but about navigating a space that gradually reveals itself, like wandering through memory or choosing which emotional piece you’re ready to engage with. I’m excited to workshop this idea in our next class, and see how it can grow into a digital story that makes memory, emotion, and interaction feel alive.

student blogs

ELIT Final Project Early Ideas

Some early ideas that have been generating since last class towards the final elit project is possibly creating an interactive poem that uses word scape movements on the screen with animation tools in a Microsoft Word Doc. There seems to be many options to animate text, images, using this platform and turn into a creative way to experience my poetry and also interact with it. I was thinking about creating some letters in Adobe Illustrator using clipping mask technique to add an image inside each letter that is associated with emotions, or events. Not really sure yet. Then export into a Word Doc which you can do as a JPEG or PNG file image or even with Adobe Acrobat using the “Export to Word” command.

I would really like to sharpen my skills again in Adobe After Effects but there may not be enough time to rekindle and do what I have planned creatively to the letters. Mister Horse is a free program extension of Adobe After Effects that gives you options of making text animated in various ways. I would like my poem to be in a way a task for the reader to transcribe the words or letters that show up on thw screen at variables in different colors, sizes, sequences compared to mine that was separated prior at a given point of time. This process can attempt to recognize the order of how we put words together to express a thought, emotion and  our thought process contemplating our structure of putting things together, so they are comprehended by others . Meaning Making of words. There is also an effect called Clipping Mask mentioned earlier that can replace the inner part of a letter character, number with an image. This can be an effective technique also I may want to experiment with to emphasize certain particular words with a feeling.

https://share.google/h0wvKMIJlndCJZO43

I was also thinking about doing cut outs of letters and some images I have or digital artworks to add to the animations in a  Word Doc being untraditional to how this program is usually used to communicate. Though this is too ambitious at this point of the Semester and would require too much time.