STEVEN TWEEDIE

 

You can think of this website as a more-polished version of my writing desk at home. Here you'll find a detailed history of my relationship with writing (see below), my most recent capstone project—Forest Meridian and the Splintered Icarus— and some of my short stories. Feel free to poke around and explore, and if you'd like to shoot me an email just head on over to the Contact page!

 

 

 

 

 

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Continue reading below to learn about my history writing and my evolution with the craft

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Writing. The word has meant a lot of different things to me throughout my time in its practice, and my relationship with the skill has morphed from academic utility into career kick-starter…and finally into a deeply fulfilling creative outlet. And yet, I’m left on the other side of this journey anxiously scratching my head, dancing along a line seemingly dividing financial stability through tech journalism and the personal fulfilment of pursuing a career as an author. The economics major in me knows that the latter will bring no financial stability, and that has always been expected, accepted; I would need to treat it as a creative outlet that might one day begin supplementing my career. But in the meantime, the tech journalism sphere is quickly losing its sheen for me, exposing the machine-like interior of rapid-fire, internet-age reporting—an environment perhaps the least conducive to nurturing any creative seeds. And while I haven’t completely reconciled the two head-butting interests, a shift in my mindset has helped strike a balance, infusing some of the same creativeness that drew me to fiction into the stark professionalism of the tech industry, all the while keeping a foot in the door of the bookstore as well. Because, at the end of the day, my heart lies in writing’s potential in storytelling—I would love nothing more than to one day be able to hand down to my kids a published novel. Perhaps this is the best testament to my evolutionary mindset and view of writing, that it has so consumed me over the past four years to actually alter my goals and aspirations—but it wasn’t always this way.

 

Entering into my freshman year at the University, any spark or interest in writing had been snuffed out from in-class writing assignments and far too many half-hearted academic essays. My writing hadn’t stagnated, but the focus had been so far honed onto academic structures and subjects that what skillsets I had developed—close-readings and literary critiques—had convinced me that in the foreseeable future, writing would be strictly a functional mode, something to be utilized to be more successful in my career, and nothing else.

 

My writing placement essay was sound and served its purpose well—it was persuasive and demonstrated that I was confident in my writing level—and for my first year at Michigan I simply “plugged and chugged” my required English class and cobbled together the ghost of excitement and progress for my reflection letter. I distinctly remember feeling incredibly disheartened as I realized that writing was now no different than a math problem set: I would analyze how difficult the assignment would be graded, adjust my effort accordingly, and turn in a functional and hopefully above-average final product.

 

Any pride I felt at the end of a paper was merely a combination of relief at its completion and satisfaction that I had written something in an hour that would probably receive top marks. Absent were any examples of personal achievement and fulfillment; the last time I concentrated, truly concentrated hard on every single word of every sentence was likely my middle school attempts at creative fiction. I think even then I knew that instead of spewing forth a hodgepodge of well-worded phrases like a mindless Gatling gun, I needed to find the mode of writing that encouraged finesse and a rooted interest on my part.

 

As these thoughts followed me into my transition from freshman to sophomore, I split the difference and chose to pursue a Minor in Writing degree, and even then I couldn’t quite break free from associating writing with functionality. I was fixated on how a potential recruiter would view the degree, and so I chose a minor in professional writing instead of creative writing (always attuned to the all-important resume). But this small step allowed me to pursue a career that combined something I was passionate about, tech and gadget news, with a skillset I was confident I excelled in: writing. Tech journalism and the classes in the minor served to get me writing again, and the introduction of a tech-flavor into the mix opened me up to the possibility of writing meaning something more.

 

My first university creative writing class, English 223, was a breath of fresh air. Suddenly, I had to actually produce a short story and prove that years of reading books and tales of adventure had translated into the ability to write creative fiction at a competitive level. For the first time since middle school, I threw myself into a piece of writing; a short story set in a science fiction environment involving a card game for the last ticket off world (I think I had recently watched Titanic). My instructor, an MFA student by the name of Sheerah Cole, recognized my effort and excitement, and her support and genuine interest set into motion my desire to write a series of novels. The feasibility of such an endeavor had always seemed more daydream than potential reality, and to have the support to attempt something such as a novel had a deep impact on me. So immovably solid was my excitement that it never even crossed my mind to start smaller: I wanted to one day be a published writer.

 

Exposing myself to other writing courses (which would quickly remind me that creative writing courses and workshops existed) was vital to putting me in an environment with creative options and opportunities, but joining The Michigan Daily immersed me in a culture that thrived on writing’s many dimensions. The people at The Daily, many of them interested in creative writing, broadened my horizons and introduced competitiveness and achievement into a space that was both professional and creative. Most importantly, The Daily’s newsroom environment highlighted the possibility of a duality to writing, a way to balance the professional constraints of journalism with the core desire to one day write something more, something fictitious and fun. The Arts writers were pushing their professional work, but infusing it with the same flavor and uniqueness that makes a good creative writer as well, and brought with it a similar glimmer of fulfillment. Perhaps professional and creative writing didn’t need to be two separate camps with different skillsets. I began to realize that while different forms had their own respective constraints, the same writer could be capable of telling a story through both mediums.

 

And so I brought what I had learned to Business Insider, a news site that offered a national platform to further develop my tech reporting. The beginnings scared me and quickly made me question my career path, for the articles were churned out at such a fast pace that I quickly grew weary of it all. Surely I would not be able to work longer than a year or two at such a place. But I was then given the opportunity to envision what story I wanted to tell for a photo essay article. Having recently walked past a homeless man using a laptop on my way to Business Insider’s Manhattan office, I chose to interview and document how the homeless use consumer technology in their everyday lives. It was a time-intensive and eye-opening experience, writing something that I truly cared about, and yet it brought with it the same sort of excitement that my fiction writing on the side did. Even though I was forced to put the photos and stories I had experienced into the often-hated “slide show” article format, the common storytelling thread was still there, and I felt proud to have shed my growing distaste for non-creative writing. Even better? The article truly seemed to resignate with people. If you're interested, you can take a look at it here.

 

Suddenly, the thought of working at Business Insider would no longer brought to mind a Kafkaesque purgatory separating me from a clear mind to finish a novel. Instead, I came to realize that it would enable me to live in a city, something I value highly for its constant creative input, and better yet, live around other creative people.

 

Returning to school for my final year, I continued my duties as an editor at The Michigan Daily, but began to concentrate more on developing my creative writing skills, hoping to gain the practice and hear enough critique to enable me to begin my novel. I enrolled in English 323 with Peter Ho Davies, once the head of the University’s MFA program for fiction writing, and I quickly began to improve as a writer. For the first time, I was producing a thirty page short story, which helped me get a feel for the stark difference in pacing between a short story and novel. My first attempt, a short story called “Abel,” was paced in the first draft much like a novel, and the first two pages were almost entirely spent setting the futuristic scene. For example, lines such as—“The soaring buildings rose up on either side of him imperiously in their race to reach the stars, leaving Abel with the distinct feeling of walking along a path carved from along the bottom of a concrete ocean, skyscraper waves only moments from crashing down on top of him” (Abel 1)—while fine in isolation…two pages’ worth of scene setting cannot be allowed in a short story where every page bleeds away from a limited supply, every sentence must advance the narrative and serve a purpose.

 

I learned through future creative pieces. My second story for English 323 was darker, more rooted in reality, and I found that the time not spent “world building” opened up the narrative and its potential to tell a deeper and more complex story, which, when I thought about it, was my intention all along. “Beneath the Black Shroud,” a horrifying story in which a man finds himself disembodied except for his head (his organs left dangling in small glass container), was my attempt to channel my inner Poe or King, and I found I need compact, spring-loaded sentences to surprise and drive fear into the reader. Over revision, descriptions of the man’s surgery were revised from sprawling exposition into lines such as “For the first time in my life, I felt pure, pure terror coursing through me. I began to scream, truly scream so that the dots popped in my vision, and the head surgeon, who had been leaning partially over me this entire time, reached forward and placed his two hands upon my shoulders, attempting (I thought) to comfort me.” I found that I was able to keep some of the cadence and flow of novel narration that I loved so much by choosing what was of vital importance to describe. Instead of a simple observer, I needed the narrative pace to match the intensity of the experience, and while longer exposition and world building have their place, I learned when such a technique fits...and when it doesn’t.

 

After English 323, I followed my professor to English 423, and again the stakes were upped. The stories were given less wiggle room when there were glaring issues, and the workshops pointed any issues out in brutal clarity. But I learned that this was necessary for success, and it was of vital importance to not only to accept but to implement revision and change if I wanted to have a shot at being published one day.

 

I now spend far longer on each story I write, and I look for the storytelling heartbeat in the tech stories I write, seeking a connection with people. The same can be said for my final capstone project, which will offer an in-depth look into the many pieces and aspects of writing a novel: brainstorming, inspiration, presentation, compelling characters, vibrant and creative environments, and most of all: imagination. Even though it is an academic assignment, I was able to seek out and further develop my novel, slowly constructing an interesting story that such a capstone project could tell, all while staying true to my creative side. The result is an original chapter from my novel-in-progress, presented in my first author's website, and coupled with a behind-the-scenes look at what went into developing the characters, setting, and story behind the chapter. I figure that people my age, perhaps unaware of the possibility of putting one’s mind to something enormous in scale like a novel, will be interested in seeing how that process shapes up over time, and this is why I plan to include interesting tidbits such as the songs that birthed a unique character or environment, or how a video inspired a setting. The ingredients can often be more intriguing than the final product.

 

This project is a natural extension and encouraged entanglement of my professional and creative interests. Commerically speaking, I believe the literary world is ripe for a series set in a Steampunk world, and the story I've been imagining for the past several months could one day be just that. For those less interested in the final product and more in the ingredients, I offer a glimpse into one young writer's process---and the excitement and fulfillment it can offer.

 

Writing for me has evolved from a function to a mindset that can exhibit itself in many forms, and this genuinely excites me. I feel like I’ve outgrown the perhaps pretentious and childish mindset that creative writing must reject professional writing (or in the case of my project, academic writing), and I’m glad I’ve come to view them as different sides to the same coin. Instead of closing doors, it opens them, and enables me to pursue a career involving writing without feeling like I’ve forsaken my more creative aspirations.

 

It all comes down to the story, the connection, and, of course, the passion to produce something I’m proud of, regardless of form.