The main project we tackled for the Narrative Project in English was our lyrical essay. A lyrical essay is similar to a poem in that it contains the same density and shapeliness. At the same time, it is able to capture the same weight as an essay. When putting a poem and essay together, it turns into a creatively molded piece of writing that indicates a sense of musicality.

The unit itself was given for us to research a topic of our choice in which we have to employ lyrical essay writing habits including the use of footnotes, stylistic techniques/devices, and optionally photographic images/artwork.

Press the graphic below to view my lyrical essay (and intention statement), “Stuck in the Game.”

To create my lyrical essay, I started from brainstorming from my interest of improving my muscle memory. From then, I tackled this project by brainstorming and researching why muscle memory exists and why it works the way it does. Research is extremely limited for this topic, and I found that I had trouble finding out ways I could put this into some sort of story; since that is what I to do for my lyrical essay. In some ways, I always sidetracked to how badly I wanted to improve my muscle memory for video games. From there, I expanded my topic to more about the toxicity of video game standards. Mental health has always been something I struggled with. Although video games can be a good distraction, being so involved in the competitive nature of video game culture can become overwhelming and destructive. In the end, my intention for my lyrical essay was to bring awareness to this toxic relationship people can get with video games.