Portrait of a Writer: Allie Solem

This week, I have been assigned to profile graduate student extraordinaire Allie Solem as a writer. My methodology for this project was rather simple: I asked Allie to provide some (written) background information about her writing influences, experiences, and other information she feels is relevant to share. I think asked her to share a short excerpt of a piece of writing of her choice, as well as to provide commentary about why she made the choices she did, and what she would do differently.

Allie picked an excerpt from a fiction piece she composed three years ago for National Novel Writing month (or NanoWrimo for short). She included pieces from word sprints (where you have to keep writing for a certain number of minutes or reach a certain number of words as quickly as possible). This is an interesting sample to me, as the word sprints help identify who Allie is as an "unfiltered" writer, though this is especially in conjunction with the meta-commentary about how she would plan to revise.

Before I even read her piece, I was influenced by Allie's choice of genre. Because Allie picked a fantastical fantasy piece, I immediately pegged her as an expressivist writer. This can be a false assumption however, as there are some creative writers who may follow a formalist or rhetorical approach. 

Allie provided the following plot summary about her novel:

Ace of Graves is about a group of three friends who hunt ghosts for fun. They all have day jobs. But Ace, the leader, works for a television production company and he gets a deal on a television show (called Ace of Graves) that will air on the History channel if they can get interest with their pilot episode. Their first episode centers around an abandoned insane asylum, where it becomes very clear that perhaps the spirits inside don’t want their story shared. Edgar (the main character) is thrown down a flight of stairs by an unseen force and breaks his leg. Soon, he begins to have haunting dreams and seems to be haunted in his apartment. His relationship with his fiancee starts to suffer as he begins to realize, more and more, that he is the vehicle for a spirit that is malevolent and perhaps a bit misunderstood. He grows increasingly uncomfortable as the show makes it closer and closer to preimier… 

One thing that I noticed is that Allie's writing is far more influenced by other things that she reads/watches rather than her own life. This is nicely reflected in the third person narrative in which Allie chose to write. It is evident that Allie referenced other fantasy/horror works as she composed her piece. Part of this could be the fact that Allie expressed discomfort with the horror genre, and wanted to make sure she got it "right." However, judging from Allie's background, it is also clear that she gets much of her inspiration from other works of fiction.

In the case of NanoWrimo, Allie emphasized her obsession with simply writing to get words on a page. I saw a lot of similarities with the act of free writing, given the fast-paced nature of the writing project. Through Allie's comments, it became clear that she would want to do a lot of revision before sending it out into the world. So perhaps Allie had an expressivist start, but she plans to apply a more formalistic (and perhaps rhetorical) approach to her work. 

In terms of actual revision, Allie recognizes the importance of it, but admits that she does not go back and revise her work. However, she recognizes and acknowledges her room for improvement and hopes to revise in the future.