Buckets's Literary Journal Experience

An abbreviated passage from a my Freshman year journal.
April 11, 2015
I participated in the 24 hour theatre project which was immensely fun and incredibly long--24 hours, to be exact. The writers took had from 7pm to 7am to write the script and we had from 7am to 7pm to practice then perform. Then you sleep forever. I was with Margaret. Margaret was with Eurydice with me and in my TMA 150 class.

1. I woke up early to get to my play practice, then did that non-stop for 12 hours. There was only a one hour break before we performed and we used it to practice. Woof. Lots of my friends and Michelle came and afterwards I bought a liter of Dr. Pepper and hung out with more friends. (basic summary)

2. "Your play was great. I promise." I probably should have told Michelle there was a kissing scene in the play. Guess when you have 12 hours to perfect a 20-minute play, things slip you mind. So freaking tired. My throat was wasted when I showed up at Spencer's apartment, but the crew was there, so I hammed it up all over again.  (casual yet theatrical, made to build personal character)

3. -Jared, my director that made me kiss Margaret even though it wasn't in the script.
    -Michelle, coming to my play even after we broke up.
    -Spencer, who showed me his new fish named Lyndon B. Johnson.
    -Margaret, who went 19 years before kissing a boy. (bullet list and focused on others' narratives)

4. I'm so grateful for all the opportunities BYU gives me to make memories and be with other people (moralized, generic)

5. Margaret is tremendous. She has such a commitment to her character, and has really good chemistry with me on stage. During Eurydice she did a great job creating connections with every character; even though she had a minor role. She got into the acting program, and is so close to convincing me to audition. Her dark curly hair and occasionally funky syllables give away her Jewish heritage, but you could never tell when she acts. You could also never tell that she never kissed a boy before tonight, but that's just the power of acting, right? (Long, descriptive explication of a single subject)

Definitely a stretch to rewrite a journal, but doing so allowed me to get into literary thinking, not regurgitation. The samples were also much, much more condensed than my typical journal entries, which made it all the more challenging. Out of the styles I imitated, I liked style 3 the most. This one mixed this sort of absent-present with a grocery list. It proved to make me think about my interactions with other people and condensing them into simple, memorable bytes.