Today is the last day of summer break formerly known as Labor Day and let me tell you I have labored. This summer consisted of every aspect in my life demanding my time and it can be divided up only so much before there is none left. So on the last day of summer break I have finally completed every last to do on the AP list as well as many other to dos on other lists. Accomplishment is a great feeling. I also wanted to add, for those of you who don't know, that I won first place in a photography contest I entered. I only mention this because my project included photography. :)
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I spent many hours inside Barbara Kingsolver's mind the past two weeks. Her project was inspiring and almost made me want to take up the same project she did just because of her incredible passion towards food. She took her family and herself out on a tree branch that she had no idea the strength of just so she could witness the view. Kingsolver was unaware of whether this journey would be a wonderful success or a failure. There was no way of knowing the difficulty or number of hardships that they might run into, but they walked out on faith, a dream, and a chance to prove something.
As I brainstormed about my own ideas for an AP project, I knew it had to be something that I was passionate about - something that I loved doing. Which was what I did. I chose to write a children's book and take pictures that would serves as the illustrations. I've always loved to write and have begun many stories. I needed to switch it up a bit though in order to make it a project that was something new and different than anything I'd done before. I figured it needed to be a short enough story that I would be able to complete (I have a habit of beginning novels that never get finished because I can't get the idea out fast enough...), but long enough to last eight weeks when planned out. The result was a children's story. It also allowed me to dabble in writing for a different audience. I had to incorporate photography somehow because that was what I had initially wanted to incorporate into a project and with my photography placed as the pictures in the story it was the perfect way.
I had no idea if I would have time to complete this project in the midst of my busy schedule and life, but I knew I had to try. It was also difficult because the idea for the story didn't come out of thin air like all of my ideas do. I had to literally sit down and think about something and when nothing came I fell back on a story idea that I had already created. I just minimized the context of it to fit younger readers.
Writer's block was just one of the many road blocks I endured in the creation of my story. I had to think about it when I was doing other things and hoped that when my mind was absent something would trigger a bridge that would get me from where I was to where I hoped to be. I think that's actually how I came up with the concept of cloud hopping and what cleared my path.
I had hoped all along that my project could touch the life of the reader in some small way and if it did then it would all be worth it. I think that through Kingsolver's project she wanted others to believe in change once they saw what her family could accomplish. It wasn't just for them, but they wanted to be seen as an example.
In many ways, Kingsolver's plan to move from Tucson and begin a life of farming is the basic construction of any project. The whole reason a project is developed is to reach a particular goal. Not always do you know how things are going to turn out, but you take a leap and hope that something good happens because of it. In the end, you could reap the results of your hard work and be touched by it or how it touches others' lives. When you hear the chirp of newborn turkeys or feel the binding of the book with your name on the front your heart will skip a beat because of the passion that allowed you to succeed.
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