The Words That Won't Come - Creative Writing Example (PDF)

Part A: (800-900 words) 12 marks Part B: Reflection Statement - hand-in (500-600 words) 8 marks That explores a moment of realisation Title: The Words That Won't Come The rain fell in a syncopated rhythm on the windowpane, like the staccato tap of fingers on a keyboard. Inside, Amir stared at the...

Part A: (800-900 words) 12 marks Part B: Reflection Statement - hand-in (500-600 words) 8 marks That explores a moment of realisation Title: The Words That Won't Come The rain fell in a syncopated rhythm on the windowpane, like the staccato tap of fingers on a keyboard. Inside, Amir stared at the blinking cursor on the screen, its silent reproach flickering against the fogged glass. Words eluded him again, tangled in the web of two languages, neither fully his. In his old country, he had been a poet—his native tongue wrapped around meaning like an embrace. Here, he was a writer only by title, a novelist trapped in the confines of a language that felt foreign, sharp, alien. A gust of wind howled through the narrow crack of the window, dragging with it the scent of wet pavement and a distant storm. He closed his eyes, and for a moment, the café around him dissolved. He was back at the old oak desk in his childhood home, scribbling verses by candlelight, each word flowing freely, effortlessly, until the lines danced on the page. But now, that same oak desk under ruins, a relic of a life left behind, while the weight of every sentence here felt like lifting bricks. It wasn’t always this hard. Amir was not always accustomed to water or the rain, the blaring arabian sun had kissed his skin ever since he was young, yet a year ago, when his feet were planted on a weathered, overcrowded boat with splintering wood barely holding it all together his eyes caught a glimpse of crystal clear waters for the first time. He held onto his most prized possession, his notebook, pages on pages of fresh ink had been splattered into carefully crafted stories, famously paper doesn’t mix well with water. Amirs eyes fixed on the rain-soaked pages of the notebook that trembled in his hands. Each word, once carefully inked with the weight of his lost home, now seemed to blur and fade as water seeped through the fragile paper, smudging his thoughts and erasing fragments of stories that had once lived clearly in his mind. The cold, relentless rain poured down, a symphony of chaos around him, as waves slapped against the boat’s sides, the saltwater creeping in and soaking through his clothes, his skin. But it was the notebook he couldn’t bear to lose, the one piece of himself he still had, the fragile thread to his past, to the identity he'd been forced to leave behind. As the storm intensified, his fingers clutched it tighter, desperate, even as the ink bled away with each passing moment, his words drowning in the sea. Once his feet finally hit hard soil, Amir was still not met with the familiar blazing sun. Instead, a sky heavy with clouds and a grey blanket seemed to press down on the world. Instead, a sky heavy with clouds folded over him like the weight of an old, tattered cloak, suffocating his breath and blurring the edges of his thoughts, leaving him lost in the midst of a world he could no longer understand. The rain beat down in erratic pulses. Amir turned his attention to the windowpane, his eyes lingering, becoming fixated on the droplets which clung to the glass with delicate tenacity, their rounded forms catching the dim light. Each droplet a flawless, singular unit in a dance of perfect cohesion. In their fragile yet unbroken symmetry, Amir saw an ideal he could no longer reach. They glistened like pearls, suspended in time, each one reflecting a world he once thought he could grasp. Their crystalline surfaces shimmered in the light, casting delicate ripples of colour. The spherical orbs leaching onto the glass, distorting his view with their shimmering reflections, a veil obscuring Amirs vision. The droplets, in their silent precision, seemed to mock him, a visual manifestation of a clarity he once commanded effortlessly in his writing. The ease with which the rain fell, shaping itself into intricate patterns, stood in stark contrast to his tongue-tied _____. He remembered a time, years ago, when his poetry earning accolades for its pristine precision (had been awarded for its mastery,) its unerring clarity. The words had flowed seamlessly then, their meaning undiluted by translation, each one a perfect reflection of his thoughts. But now, sitting before the screen, the cursor blinked back at him, a silent reminder of how far he had fallen from that effortless brilliance. The rain outside, in its perfection, highlighted the gulf between the man he once was and the writer he had become. Amir’s thoughts were scattered, like the rain outside, slipping away faster than he could grasp them. Through observing the water and droplets, finds the beauty of the droplets and water (in the beauty of their ability to break and join, as well as their cloudiness/murkiness/’dirt’) Others, clouded with the faintest smudge of dirt or debris, traced their own jagged journey downward, a testament to their imperfection. Yet it was in that murkiness—those droplets that were not perfectly clear—that he saw a strange beauty. The water, in its constant breaking and joining, was not just fluid, but alive, changing, always in transition. It was messy, but it was honest in its imperfection, unafraid to leave behind traces of itself as it moved. He found something almost comforting in this—the way the droplets never stayed the same, the way they didn't need to be perfect to be beautiful. Reflection The purpose of my creative piece, ‘The Words That Won’t Come’, is to explore the impact of language on creative expression and how perfectionism can stifle an artist’s ability to create. I achieved my purpose through Amir’s internal struggles with writing, capturing how the pressure of language mastery and the desire for flawless output can lead to creative paralysis. I drew inspiration from texts such as Colum Mcanns “What Time is it Where You Are Now,” “Father and Child,” by Gwen Harwood as well as Elizabeth Harrower's “Fun of the Fair,” which all had a profound influence in shaping my narrative. In order to communicate the idea of language acting as both a conduit and a barrier to creative expression, I employed the stylistic device of juxtaposition in paragraph three, where Amir’s past experience as a poet contrasts sharply with his current difficulty in writing. His earlier ease with words is juxtaposed with the harsh reality of his creative block, which is magnified by the pressure to perform perfectly in a foreign language. As Amir reflects on his past, he recalls, “In his old country, he had been a poet—his native tongue wrapped around meaning like an embrace,” highlighting the tension between Amir’s former creative freedom and the paralysing perfectionism that now dominates his process, illustrating how the weight of expectation and the disconnection from his native language have stifled his ability to write with the same ease and fluidity. This was inspired by my reading of “What time is it where you are now?” by Colum Mcnn who conveys the ideas of perfectionism through his employment of metafiction in which he continuously questions his writing with the stream of consciousness language form, “What happens if the line goes dead? What happens if a shot…is that feasible? is that possible?” Whilst Mcann employs metafaction, I altered the structure of my creative piece by employing juxtaposition as it allowed me to better achieve my purpose of conveying how perfectionism can stifle an artist’s ability to create. To further explore the purpose of the impact of language on creative expression, I incorporated the motif of water throughout the piece. The imagery and pathetic fallacy of the rainstorm that reflects both a threatening and nurturing duality of Amirs experience with language.