Best of Week: Sea of Information

Sea of Information is a short story written by Andrea Barrett. In this short story she writes about the struggles she has with writing and what helps her get back on track. I felt that Sea of Information was the best of the week because we spent most of the week discussing the story. The assignment was to pick the top three insights about creativity, but she wrote about so many it was difficult to choose only three. In order to find and understand those insights, you had to read in between the lines. 


On almost every page of Sea of Information she wrote about creativity and how it influences her writing. For example, on page 14, she writes about how much she reads and that its the only way she knows to deeply inhabit a world other than the limited one of my own experiences. It's pretty much straight forward but in between the lines she's telling her audience that reading can give you access to live you have not lived. Also on page 10, she does research and reads about tuberculosis. Her research gave her a new perspective on the situation of tuberculosis because she read about others experiences and not just her own. 


Barrett also writes from her own experiences which is very influential on her writing. She was in New York City during the attacks of 9/11 and she said that many writers had difficulty with writing after the attacks because everything felt different. Most writers just asked themselves what the point was. Then Barrett figured out that if she wrote, that maybe she would make some sense out of what happened. Since the experience was still too "raw" it was hard for her to start getting some ideas on paper. But in the end she was able to find relief and continue writing from experiences. 


Barrett researched, experienced, read, and imagined which all inspired greater creativity in her writing. All these elements led her to better writing and which is one of the reasons I felt that this was the best of the week. It interested me that so many things are factors to writing and creativity. One other reason was her use of details. Each page and each paragraph used a sufficient amount of details to explain the point she was trying to get across. Overall I think Barrett is a good writer and I enjoyed reading her short story last week in class.