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Our main concern in this SECTION has been to make clear that good writing springs initially not from formulas but from creative activity, from the desire and need to express particular information, thoughts, and feelings to a specific audience. Even when it’s not at all personal in the sense of being about you, your writing always deserves a personal commitment, not only to the subject but to the actual job of composing. If you’re to take full responsibility for what you write, you need to develop habits that work for you (though not necessarily for anyone else), and you need to learn to appraise the strengths and weaknesses of what you write. Commitment to writing calls for both genuine involvement and candid self-criticism. As a means of self-appraisal, you should find it helpful now and then to keep a running account of how you go about preparing an essay. Try to adopt a double vision: watch yourself as you work, and jot down notes on how you go about the job. Identify the trouble spots at every stage from prewriting to final revision. Note how you try to solve (or sidestep) each problem. When you’ve finished the paper, write an account of what you did, and make an honest attempt to evaluate the paper you produced. • For Analysis and Writing 1. Take stock of your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. In a short paper addressed to your instructor, tell about your experiences in writing. How much and what kinds have you done? What’s frustrated you? What’s given you pleasure? What kind of writing do you think you do best? What, in your judgment, do you need to do to improve your writing? Here are three responses to this assignment: a. In general, I don’t particularly enjoy writing. I don’t dislike writing, but I would rather be working with numbers than with letters. I don’t consider myself a particularly good writer because I feel it takes me too many words to get my point across. I’ve al ways received good grades on papers mainly because they contained some good ideas, not because they were well expressed. If I follow through with my major (accounting) I don’t think I’ll be doing much writing (other than numbers), but I would like to learn to write better, mainly because I don’t think I could do a very good job on some of the things necessary in college, such as term papers, resumés, etc. I think that my main problem in writing is due to a fairly limited vocabulary. As for what kind of writing I like best, I really don’t have any preferences. I haven’t done too much voluntary writing of any kind. b. I have a great deal of trouble expressing myself in any form of writing, forced or not forced. Due to this problem I seldom write about anything, unless I am forced to. In high school I did have some training in writing different types of papers such as expository and critical. It might have helped a little except for the fact that I don’t like to write and therefore didn’t practice very much. I also had training in writing the research paper. The only type of writing which I really don’t mind is writing a letter. I only write letters when I have something to say. I also don’t mind writing research papers that much. This is because I am not forced to think of any original ideas, but I am taking the ideas of other people and putting them together. The times I have trouble come when I have to write original poetry or some thing like that. I guess my imagination isn’t big enough. I just seem to have trouble coming up with the right words in the right spots. c. Until the last half of my senior year in high school I didn’t do much writing except what I had to for course work. Once in a while when I was twelve or thirteen I would write a poem and I had a spell of science fiction writing one summer. But mainly I just wrote for courses—biology and history and of course English where I remember writing guide reports and some critical essays. I have always preferred reading to writing. I suppose it was because I got interested in some modern writers last year and because I had a teacher who encouraged me to try different kinds of writing that I began to take pleasure in expressing my ideas and feelings in different styles. Anyway, last spring writing became important to me for the first time in all the years I’ve been in school. Our teacher encouraged us to write in a journal every day. We didn’t have to do it, but when I got in the habit I found I enjoyed it. Our teacher told us to single out just one thing that had happened, one mood, or one idea we’d had and write about that. So the journal wasn’t as much a diary as a record of moments that had made an impression on us. Another thing I learned last year was to write for different kinds of people. Unlike other courses, where we had to please only the teacher, we were expected to write our papers for senators or movie stars or news commentators or parents or whoever we wanted to express an opinion to. But we had to have something to say. Our teacher always knew when we were faking it. As a result I had to get rid of empty, flowery phrases that just use up space. I’ve found that my best papers were those which came from my heart. If I have a strong opinion about a subject the words seem to flow naturally. By looking at my writing as a learning situation or chance to express an idea, instead of an assignment which needs completing, I’ve learned to enjoy writing a lot more. I still have a lot to learn about how to put on paper the ideas in my head. Usually I leave too much for the reader to figure out. I have to say what I mean more fully, in more detail, and more expressively so that the reader will read what I write with some pleasure as well as understanding. Hopefully I will learn to do this in college. 2. Write a paragraph of advice to the author of I a, b, or c. 3. Choose a subject that you’re interested in and that you feel competent to write about. Take any approach to it that you wish, specify an audience, and write a paper of about 750 words. While prewriting; and writing the paper, make notes on how you go about it. Be as accurate as you can in reporting the procedures you follow in generating content for the paper and in presenting the content for the audience you’ve chosen. Turn in your notes with your paper. 4. The following paper and the accompanying analysis were produced at the end of the second week of an advanced com position course in response to the preceding assignment. As you read the paper and the analysis, ask yourself these questions: c. Until the last half of my senior year in high school I didn’t do much writing except what I had to for course work. Once in a while when I was twelve or thirteen I would write a poem and I had a spell of science fiction writing one summer. But mainly I just wrote for courses—biology and history and of course English where I remember writing guide reports and some critical essays. I have always preferred reading to writing. I suppose it was because I got interested in some modern writers last year and because I had a teacher who encouraged me to try different kinds of writing that I began to take pleasure in expressing my ideas and feelings in different styles. Anyway, last spring writing became important to me for the first time in all the years I’ve been in school. Our teacher encouraged us to write in a journal every day. We didn’t have to do it, but when I got in the habit I found I enjoyed it. Our teacher told us to single out just one thing that had happened, one mood, or one idea we’d had and write about that. So the journal wasn’t as much a diary as a record of moments that had made an impression on us. Another thing I learned last year was to write for different kinds of people. Unlike other courses, where we had to please only the teacher, we were expected to write our papers for senators or movie stars or news commentators or parents or whoever we wanted to express an opinion to. But we had to have something to say. Our teacher always knew when we were faking it. As a result I had to get rid of empty, flowery phrases that just use up space. I’ve found that my best papers were those which came from my heart. If I have a strong opinion about a subject the words seem to flow naturally. By looking at my writing as a learning situation or chance to express an idea, instead of an assignment which needs completing, I’ve learned to enjoy writing a lot more. I still have a lot to learn about how to put on paper the ideas in my head. Usually I leave too much for the reader to figure out. I have to say what I mean more fully, in more detail, and more expressively so that the reader will read what I write with some pleasure as well as understanding. Hopefully I will learn to do this in college. 2. Write a paragraph of advice to the author of 1a, b, or c. 3. Choose a subject that you’re interested in and that you feel competent to write about. Take any approach to it that you wish, specify an audience, and write a paper of about 750 words. While prewriting and writing the paper, make notes on how you go about it. Be as accurate as you can in reporting the procedures you follow in generating content for the paper and in presenting the content for the audience you’ve chosen. Turn in your notes with your paper. 4. The following paper and the accompanying analysis were produced at the end of the second week of an advanced corn- position course in response to the preceding assignment. As you read the paper and the analysis, ask yourself these questions: Did the writer choose a good subject? Has the writer found a satisfactory way of approaching the subject? Can you visualize the scene? Does the writing re create the experience clearly and vividly enough for you to share the author’s feelings? Has the writer made a sound evaluation of the paper? Do you think it went through enough drafts? What are its strengths? Its weaknesses? Write a letter to the author of “An Island Perspective,” proposing solutions to the problems she recognizes and suggesting specific ways her paper could be improved. An Island Perspective I suppose everyone on the island had a favorite spot. Mine was a little cove about a quarter of the way around the coast from the hotel. If none of the guests were around — we had to preserve a conservative image for them — I would take off my shift and, in my swim suit, test the freedom of my limbs against the stability of the rocks, running and leaping from one to another. It was simple happiness then, but here at college I wonder that it didn’t approach the ecstasy I know I would feel now if somehow I could be back at Star Island. I would arrive at the cove breathless, quickly dive in, and then in one continuous movement slide from the water to a prone position on the rocks. For the first few moments I could do nothing more than lie there, still breathing hard, and feel the rays from the omnipresent sun weave their way through the cool ocean breeze. The regularity of the waves as they broke against the rocks was nothing short of a lullaby for me after the frantic business of serving breakfast to two hundred guests. I would let the sound gradually replace the echo of banging dishes, chattering girls, and shouted orders, until my mind was blank except for the rhythmical song of the sea. It must have been an ambitious nature that made me plan reading and letter writing each time I went to the cove. Whatever it was, it fought a losing battle all summer, never giving up the hope that maybe today would be the day I would finally accomplish something “productive.” But I was in the sea world, and the most productive thing I could do was to become a part of that world. That meant, at first, letting the sounds of gulls and waves override my mind’s activities, and allowing the sun, air, and spray to relax my tense body. It meant giving in to the hypnotic power of the sea. Later, though, after I’d become like a mussel on the rocks— part of the rocks, yet not a rock — my mind would begin to respond to the sea. Thoughts flowed in and out, short, almost wordless impressions as quickly gone as they had come. Gently they came, yet more and more pervasively, like the rising tide, and I’d begin to play with them, holding them a little longer, asking a little more of them. Thoughts that had been troublesome and seemed complex drifted to their natural place and, feeling at home there, could relax and stop demanding attention by pretending they were more important than they were. I don’t know if I was experiencing Contemplation, Meditation, or just Peaceful Solitude as I lay there on the rocks in the cove. Now that I’m back on the mainland, it seems impossible to find time to be alone, to empty myself as I did by the sea, and then to explore my thoughts with such curious, sometimes amusing, sometimes startling objectivity. If I miss the sea, it’s because it expected nothing of me, yet gave me its perspective on my often confused thinking, a perspective of simplicity and naturalness. Self-Analysis At first mention of writing about a personal experience, I thought of Star Island, one of my most recent and more unusual experiences. But I hesitated a few days, considering topics not quite so immediate that I could perhaps handle more objectively. There was also the fear that anything I wrote about Star would lose something in the telling and fail to communicate to the reader the experience that had meant so much to me. I finally decided that the topic must be Star, because I rejected all other ideas as less interesting. Besides, it was a good justification for thinking about Star as much as I wanted to without feeling that I was shirking school responsibilities. I started several times, the first a light description of some of the more amusing aspects of living on an island for ten weeks. Now I think perhaps I should have continued with that idea, rather than switching to a more serious topic. It’s easier to con vey the humor in incidents than it’s to convey feelings. I began the submitted essay on Monday. I wrote two paragraphs after reliving the experience I wanted to re-create several times earlier that day. I rejected a first paragraph about how I got the job as irrelevant and made the second paragraph the opening one. At the point where I mention feeling like a mussel on a rock, I was stuck for a transition to describe the gradually increasing activity of my mind. I was also bothered that my feelings sounded too “romantic” and unreal. My problem—that of describing a situation that at the time wasn’t analyzed or “metaphorized” (I can’t think of any other word for it), yet now, in retrospect, doing both. I did not solve that problem, so I am not accurately describing to the reader my feelings of the moment, but rather the significance they have taken in my memory—my feelings now, at college, about then, at Star. My ideas grew more complex, thus harder to express, and further away from the simplicity I wanted to convey. Tuesday I did quite a bit of piecemeal composition. I went to bed Tuesday night wanting to change topics but forced by the schedule to stay with the one I had chosen. Wednesday morning I reread what I had written, crossed out one whole paragraph, and gave up on a transition I had been trying to make from the experience on Star to the problem of re-creating the situation here. Wednesday afternoon I rearranged a few sentences, reworded several phrases, and bought paper for the final typescript. I have to admit that the essay falls short of my expectations by a more than usual distance. However, I am satisfied with several of the sentences and out of necessity must for the present consider the essay finished. PREV. | NEXT: SECTION Two--Developing Papers top of page Home Similar Articles |