In reflecting on how your experience of creating a myth differs from and / or enhances the study of myth, I found that my creating a myth really fell in to a lot of established parameters of previous myths, no matter how creative I thought I was being with the subject, so I just went with it in a traditional kind of myth. I really think that that is the power of myth in our society. I came up with the idea of figuring out how cats were created. I automatically came up with an earth mother creator that was called by people to help them with their problems, and something new was created for the people to help save them.
This experience enhances the study of myth in that my mind fell quickly into traditional forms of mythological beings because that is what I have learned about over time, thus reinforcing the power of that cultural learning. Even though I started out my myth story as “Why Cats Were Created”, I changed it to, “Why Cats Purr”, to explore more an explanation for a natural phenomenon of purring.
From this creative writing experience I learned that in my future teachings or life that to be a creative writer, being really creative is stepping outside the parameters of what is known, and trying to create something new or something that hasn’t been done before. Creative writing also involves choosing to stay within those learned parameters to create based on traditional forms or types. For instance, I now want to create a myth that is totally new like some of the really far-out myths that others created.
