Capstone Project

This semester I have been working on my creative writing capstone project. For this project, I need to write a novella that's thirty to sixty pages long, a critical intro, and an annotated bibliography. I have currently written about thirty pages of my novella, but I still have a long way to go before I can wrap up my story. The focus for my novella was trauma theory, with the story being set in the post-apocalyptic genre. I am writing my capstone in my Topics in Writing class where we have been focused on post-apocalyptic stories such as "Dawn" by Octavia Butler, "Station Eleven" by Emily Mandel, and "Black Moon" by Kenneth Calhoun. Since this is the genre we are focused on in the class, that is the genre I have to write my capstone in. However, I have also decided to write in the dystopian genre as well. This means my story will be set after the collapse of civilization where a community is experiencing great suffering or an injustice

This is the biggest writing project I have ever worked on. I am extremely excited to write out my novella, but I'm also worried about writing my critical intro and being able to wrap up my story in under sixty pages. While it is easier to write short stories or novellas, I always end up getting wrapped up in worldbuilding and creating something unnecessarily massive. My project is forcing me to reign this in. After I finish all my writing for the semester, I will have several faculty members look my project over before I finish it up and present it in the spring. This will be my final project as a senior at Ohio Northern University. I am excited, but also nervous. I have loved being at Ohio Northern for the past four years. It has been a wild ride, and I am definitely going to miss being at college.