To be honest, this unit more challenging for me than our poetry unit. I’m not usually into reading short stories, so I wasn’t sure about how I was going to handle writing one; and my fears definitely did come true. I started a lot of stories, I spent hours writing a story but it took me only a few seconds to delete it. I was never satisfied with what I had written and frankly, I’m not that happy with the final copy either.

But I learned a lot of things from this unit: I learned that time management is really important. I learned that when given correctly, criticism is good because it really helped me improve my story. I learned that if I were to write another short story, I would definitely try to spend more time on it and maybe be more cruel and delete every single thing that I’m not satisfied with instead of leaving some parts that I don’t really like so that I can finish my story faster. And more importantly, I learned that I can’t force creativity/ inspiration, and when I start a story with a topic that is not unique or interesting, the rest of the story becomes sloppy too.

We also read a lot of stories during this unit; The Tell-Tale Heart, The Lottery, The Big Snit, The Fall of a City… All of them were great and specifically The Lottery had a shocking ending. One of my favourite aspects of this unit was reading and discussing these stories, because I realized that everybody interpreted the story in a different way and/or related to the story on a different level. I think this shows that’s one of the things that make a short story interesting and more enjoyable to read.

I don’t think I will write another short story in a long time, but if I ever write a short story again, I will be more careful about my sentences, my topic, and the words I use. In my opinion, as I continue reading books and writing, everything that I’m not content with will improve. I hope our next unit will be more fun!