Hello there, my name is Madison Bean. I’m a creative writing major and a sophomore at the City College of New York. I grew up in New Paltz, a town about two hours upstate from the Harlem 125th street station. It’s a college town set against the Shawangunk mountains in the Hudson Valley, where everywhere has a view. I went to a high school where I knew everyone in my graduating class’s parents on a name-to-name basis. I went to Saint Joseph’s every Sunday from when I was 3 to 18 and met my first boyfriend in CCD. Across from the church was a playground and an open field where during my first year of college spend nights intoxicated and asleep in the muddy grass. I still go up there on weekends as if I’m slowly weening myself off of a life I once had. Now in the city, a new environment, one not completely dissimilar from my home, but enough so I notice, my writing has also developed into something a younger me would feel estranged to. There’s a certain psychology that you take on as a woman in New York, the constant analyzation of everyone on the street, in the subway, always making sure you’re not in harm’s way while maintaining a necessary measure of perceivable disinterest. What can I say, I’m new here. Through this paradigm shift in my life, writing has been a massive outlet for my fears, insecurities, regrets, hopes, dreams, word vomit, oversharing, criminal confessions, etc. Though literary composition is my preferred mode of artistic expression, I spend most spare time engaging in other art styles, specifically illustration and music film making. If I’m not doing any of these things, I’m generally wallowing in self-pity and distress, trying to find something to take up my time and trick my brain into thinking I’m being productive, and usually resulting in a cope that digs an even deeper hole than the one I was upset about in the first place. I value honesty (though that may just be the catholic guilt talking) and the ability for especially those involved in the arts to have a flexible mindset (probably not a catholic school induced moral). I’m, more so than everything I’ve said so far, still in the act of becoming, the work published to this page is emblematic of that.
In this class, I took all of this and put it to paper. Not just this, I also had hot takes that I had just expanded upon become essays that with the workshopping process became more layered and coherent pieces of work. I learned the importance of pacing in regard to the tone of a piece, how a shorter essay was harder to write than a longer one, and how i would make my writing work to better reach an audience rather than for the sake of being enjoyable to myself exclusively. To hear the things my piers felt were missing from an essay and agreeing was something I hadn’t expected enjoying so much, like I was being gifted a missing piece to a puzzle I made by hand. It was a little confusing, and a lot of the time it took a few deep rereads and critical brainstorming before I could really incorporate the critiques to fit my work, but ultimately, it paid off. I am far more pleased with my final drafts than with their raw counterparts that I had submitted for workshopping. I don’t think they’re as good as they could possibly be, if they were, I’d never be done with them. With every revision and new perspective, comes a meaningful payoff and I am thankful to have had the opportunity to adjust my work routinely as a part of this class.
