Throughout my high school career I have considered myself to be a strong writer. I can weave words and sentences together to make a paper flow more naturally, I know how much I can assert my own opinion without offending my reader, and I am able to tailor the style of the paper to directly support its purpose. Yet as I began to develop my own style of writing I began to notice that I had developed some very damaging weakness within my writing style. While one of my strengths as a writer is making a paper flow more naturally this means that my papers become lacking in structure, often becoming to free form which may not convey the tone of the paper properly or may make the writing appear unfocused. The beginning of a paper is another one of my weaker areas. The beginning of any piece of writing is by far the most important part, so as a result I don't feel satisfied unless I get it exactly "right". As a result there have been times when I have spent a good hour staring at a blank computer screen trying to work that one sentence correctly. Nowadays I will often write the intro last in order to be more efficient, but it is still something that I struggle with. A more common problem that I struggle with is grammar; often time when I start to feel that I am on a roll I will be oblivious to the many grammatical errors that begin to pile up. If I don’t catch these errors before I turn in my writing they will not only distract from the actually writing, but will make the paper appear unprofessional. The last problem that I have with writing is more of a personality issue than anything else. I am somewhat of a picky writer, when I am given a certain amount of freedom within a writing assignment, then the process becomes both fun and rewarding. However when I am required to write of a certain topic in a certain way then the process becomes arduous and difficult. As a result the final product is often of a much lower quality. This has come back to bit me more than a few times in high school where a paper that could of been a solid A was instead a low B because I didn't put my best effort into it. My goal over this course is to eliminate weakness to become a better rounded writer. Another goal is to gain more of an insight into writing fiction, something I have always wanted to do, but do not feel that I am skilled enough to do so. My desire to improve my writing came from reading 2 books, Shogun by James Cavell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Dgun_%28novel%29) and Neverwhere by Neil Gaimen (http://www.amazon.com/Neverwhere-Neil-Gaiman/dp/0380789019). These two books really showed me what fictional writing could be and gave me something to aspire to. And while I don’t think that I will ever be as good as these two, I can damn well try.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed.
Oh...getting started. The bane of all writerly existences. It's tough! I think Ann Lamott offers the best advice. Just start writing -- just start somewhere. That's all you need to do. Often times, you don't know exactly how a piece of writing should start until it's finished. Sometimes, you write four paragraphs to start something only to realize that your fourth paragraph is the perfect introduction. There is no easy formula, unfortunately. But there are lots of ways to get started and there's always a favorite method for everyone. A lot of times, it's also important to remember that we don't start writing with words on the page -- we start writing in our heads. It's in your head where you get the writing process started, so realize that before you've actually sat down to write, you've done a good chunk of work in your mind already. And often, staring at the blank page is the most effective writing we do.
ReplyDeleteLuckily, in this class, you won't be forced to write about anything in particular. I'm just going to teach you how to write in different formats. What you write about is up to you! Which will hopefully make the experience more enjoyable.
Also: I'll try to put some fiction writing prompts up on the blog for extra credit, especially for all of those folks who want to give it a shot!
Thanks.