Reflection on Renga Exercise

I had a lot of fun with the renga exercises we did in class recently. It was a nice change to not worry so much about the direction of a piece and just write something without any pressure. I'm sure a few other people enjoyed that too, because somehow the character of my story became a bird. I don't know if it gets much worse in terms of thematic changes. The story was initially about one of feeling at home in a new place, even if you aren't familiar with it, similar to my own experience moving from Adelaide to Melbourne. By the end of the story, I struggle to find a coherent theme without salvaging. Possibly it could be read with a theme of overcoming adversity, with the bird succeeding in taking the metal can. Or a story about seeing things from a new perspective? I'm not entirely sure. I wonder how the bird character came to be. Was it just a bird metaphor gone wrong, or the piece up until then just severely misread? Did somebody just decide to completely change the direction of the story on a whim? The whole thing was quite bemusing and entertaining to read.
The second story, created through my prompt of "What can and can’t you ask somebody that you are interviewing?" jumped to extremes much faster than I expected it to. The opening line of this story was "How many people have you fucked?", which, to be honest, I should have seen coming. I didn't really have a story or theme in mind when I wrote this prompt, but it quickly became about finding the boundaries of an interviewee. It was interesting to see where other people took my prompt, even if it was in a very different direction to what I would have done.
Throughout the first exercise, I found myself somewhat uncomfortable with the interruption of my creative flow. I felt that there was a bit of pressure to be truthful to the original writer's intention and continue the story on in a way they would be happy with. I felt as if I didn't really have enough time to fully take in the work, reading it once and feeling like I needed to read it again, but not having enough time to do so. Seven minutes felt like long enough that I should be contributing to the work in a positive manner, which was slightly stressful and uncomfortable.
I found myself much more comfortable with the two-minute renga, as I only had time to add a sentence or two. This enabled me to simply write without worrying about contributing to the story. I simply had to add something as quickly as I could and make sure it was vaguely coherent with the rest of the piece. Despite having my creative flow disrupted more frequently, this was a much more enjoyable process.

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