M
y hands trembled as I carried my lap-
top in my sweaty palms, nervousness
filling my brain. I walked with no
urgency, trying to drag the process out as long as
possible. I hoped for any sort of divine interven-
tion that would delay the event that was about to
unfold: I had to present my writer’s notebook in
front of my entire class.
As I made my way to the podium, I placed the
laptop down with a sense of trepidation, unsure of
what would come next. I had presented in front of
many classrooms before, but there was something
different about this one — instead of the typical
presentation, covering a topic from the class, I was
presenting my fiction writing.
This work was all my own, a journey into the
depths of my creativity. Would my classmates like
the style of my work, or would they find it bor-
ing? Would they understand the story, or would
they pan its lack of plot development? I was trying
something new but also very risky: showing what
I thought passed for good fiction, which might
have been completely opposite from what every-
one else thought.
Before we get to that story, let me backtrack for
a minute. One day, in my 11th grade English class,
I had a severe
case of writer’s block
while trying to write
my writer’s notebook
for the week. Every
week, we had to write
a one-to-two-page story
about any topic we
wanted and present it
in front of the class,
either sitting at
your desk or at the
class podium (you
got more brownie
points if you gave it
at the podium). These
pieces were a significant
portion of my grade and
much care had to go into
crafting them. They had
to be interesting; full
of pithy literary
description; and,
more importantly, authentic. Try as I may have,
I could not pull out an interesting life story from
the depths of my brain that I wanted to share with
the class.
For my first entry, I tried to make watching a
baseball game seem like an otherworldly experi-
ence, filled with an overload of visual description.
On a trip the summer before my junior year of high
school, I watched the Blue Jays game from the top
of the CN Tower, the tallest building in Toronto.
Watching from that far intrigued me. It was
unlike any baseball game I had seen: The fans
looked like mere dots in blue seats; the players on
the field were barely discernible from the color
of the grass. From that far up, I was unable to see
the ball as a cue to what was happening in the
game. Being the baseball buff that I am, my entry
became about how the lack of visual clarity forced
me to imagine what was happening in the game,
and how I had to reach deep into my baseball
knowledge to make sense of it at all.
I stepped up to the plate and began to read my
writing. While I thought this piece was quite cre-
ative, apparently my class and the teacher didn’t
feel the same way, and I decided I needed to
change tack. But to what, exactly? I wasn’t chock-
full of remarkable stories, and trying to make my
boring life events seem interesting didn’t work. I
went to my teacher for advice, and that’s when the
spark hit me — I would pivot to writing fiction.
Given my history of writing creative stories, I
should have realized it earlier, but I was too afraid
to share my mystery stories with the class. Being
the insecure eleventh grader that I was, I no lon-
ger had the burning desire of my seventh-grade
self to share my fiction in front of such opinion-
ated teenagers. What if they found my ideas to
be rip-offs, or too much like history class, or just
plain boring? How could I keep them enthralled,
without losing that all-important descriptive fac-
tor? I should write a story based off of Sherlock
Holmes, with a continuing plot arc that would
keep listeners coming back.
I would try to keep them in suspense with a
murder mystery, with a few twists of my own. I
wanted to set the stories in the modern-day, but
the main character would travel back in time —
incorporating my love of technology — and be
forced to solve the mystery in order to return to
the present.
After adding in my love of history, I now had
a story set in present-day England, with a brief
flashback to the Victorian era, an enthralling peri-
od for me. The contrast between the technological
advancements of the Industrial Revolution and
the grittiness of 1890s London made for a perfect
conflict and the presence of a modern-day charac-
ter trying to make sense of the past would make it
more palpable for my contemporary audience.
I thought I had a most pleasant idea, but I was
still filled with doubt as to whether they would
accept it. Standing at the podium, I was about to
test that proposition.
Though I was always uncomfortable speak-
ing in front of the class, I was more nervous than
usual this time. I kept tripping over my words, the
uncertainty still lingering over my voice.
I started off the story in an old English coun-
try estate, with a man unsure as to his place in the
modern world. He felt lonely and out of his time,
looking for a way out of his boring life as a London
banker. He wished he could be a detective, given
his sharp mental skills, helping people solve their
most pressing mysteries. Though he had plenty
of money, he couldn’t find satisfaction, and was
trying to fulfill it by buying a manor in the coun-
tryside, a respite from his busy city life. While on
the house tour, he found a secret bookshelf in the
study, and all of a sudden, he became absorbed
into a roaring wind, and then a whole new world:
1890s London. Thrown into this new environ-
ment, the main character decides to adopt the
role of his favorite fictional character, Sherlock
Holmes. To see whether this grand idea would
work, you would have to wait for the next entry,
and thus my series was born.
After I finally delivered the last word, I looked
up to see what my audience thought, and to my
complete surprise the spoken feedback was a
lot more positive than I thought it would be. My
teacher liked this a lot more, and I realized I did
too. The formula was so plainly obvious I missed
it: Write about something you are interested in,
and that authenticity will shine through.
Wednesday, September 25, 2019 // The Statement
2B
Managing Statement Editor
Andrea Pérez Balderrama
Deputy Editors
Matthew Harmon
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Associate Editor
Eli Rallo
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Copy Editor
Silas Lee
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Editor in Chief
Maya Goldman
Managing Editor
Finntan Storer
statement
THE MICHIGAN DAILY | SEPTEMBER 25, 2019
Reopening an old chapter in
my notebook
BY ALEXANDER COTIGNOLA, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
ILLUSTRATION BY JACK SILBERMAN