Maya Angelou: What Makes A Good Writer?

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As the late and great poet Maya Angelou once said, “When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we’re capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go from darkness to darkness. I’m trying for that. But I’m also trying for the language, I’m trying to see how it can really sound. I really love language. I love it for what it does for us, how it allows us to explain the pain and glory, the nuances and delicacies of our existence. And then it allows us to laugh, allows us to show wit. Real wit is shown in language. We need language.” Writing in a college student’s world today is mainly limited to Facebook messages, text messages, and email. We hardly, as a generation, write “snail mail” anymore, as my mother calls it. Papers are written on a need to complete basis and with that in mind it is occasionally hard to differentiate our professional voice versus our laid back conversational voice. Over the course of this essay I am going to tell you what my strengths and weaknesses are, my expectations on how to become a better writer, and my step by step on how to achieve my expectations.
Generally, a writer’s strengths and weaknesses vary; however, mine are fairly common. My greatest strengths include following rubrics and …show more content…

I do not like to sound “pedestrian” in my writing. For example, if I use a simple word such as big, I will use a thesaurus to find a more age and skill level appropriate word to apply. Every writer has weaknesses; some of mine include grammar and punctuation, (comma splices are my mortal enemy), procrastination, and I have a significant problem with doubting myself when it comes to my intellectual abilities. Last semester before every paper got turned in to my professor, I had my fiancé read and correct each and every one. Then, when my professor would finally hand the papers back, mine were constantly covered in red ink. It was frustrating; however, every time I tried to better

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