The Grocery Store
My relationship with writing has always been a push or pull towards or against it. I liked to write freely, with no restrictions and about anything I want. Free range creativity gave me the ideal mindset in order to keep writing and create anything I wanted with the only limit being what I could imagine. But when I had restrictions and guidelines that prevented me from having fun with my assignment I found it tiring and very difficult to keep writing and would have little interest in my assignment. But as a senior I took a class that was a good balance between the two.
The class I enrolled in was called Creative Reading and Writing. In the course we would be given assignments giving us a general idea of what the assignment had to be about but enough creativity to have fun and a creativity aspect that no other class gave me. It also helped us write our college essays for applications to universities. But there was one assignment that I really enjoyed writing that gave me some creativity and freedom to make a story.
During late October we were given an assignment to write any kind of horror short story and by the end of the assignment’s duration we had to present it to the class like a campfire story. The only restriction was that we had to incorporate a certain setting of our choice into the story. Our teacher placed about 20 or so photos of various settings, one of which we chose to be the setting of our story. There were places like cemeteries, forests, abandoned houses and mansions but I was first to choose. I didn’t want to make a story I couldn’t put some realistic input into so I overlooked many of the settings and chose a grocery store. I chose the store because I used to work at a Market Basket and when I had to close, it sometimes got scary being in the store by myself.
After choosing the grocery store as my setting we had to incorporate a paranormal aspect into the story or a monster we had to fight. I spent a class period finding the scariest monster I could find. It had to be truly scary, something quick and deadly but had a weakness I could exploit. I chose a Wendigo to be the antagonist creature. It was tall, thin,grey with long claws and razor sharp teeth and no hair. It was humanoid with big milk white eyes and had an ear piercing screech. It’s only weakness was that it’s vision could only see movement.
My story placed me in the store by myself going up and down the aisles checking inventory. I put as much real life attributes that I had actually experienced whilst I worked at Market Basket. I added as much detail as I could like my heartbeat, noises, different things that I remember doing at that job. Me trying to make it as realistic as possible probably was the reason I did so well on this assignment. I enjoyed the fact I made this so realistic to me and my experiences and I believe the class I presented my assignment to enjoyed the detail and effort to realism as well.
The hardest part of the assignment wasn’t finding an idea. It wasn’t starting the essay. It wasn’t even organizing my ideas into paragraphs. It was presenting. Presenting was the most nerve racking part, probably because I was nervous at how they would like it because there were true aspects and realistic memories in it. But after I presented it that all clapped and seemed to really enjoy it, which made the whole essay worth it. I think it gave me public speaking and creative writing skills that I will use for other assignments and maybe even for the rest of my life.
