As a writer, and as a writer in a college course that is all about writing, I wrote a great deal about the craft of writing itself. Sure, we all should have done a fair amount of actual writing too, what with five to ten page short stories to write and edit…and edit, and edit and so on and so forth. But that is one important thing that I will take away from these past eight weeks: the importance of the revision. I have previously learned how to revise and edit a work, and I have learned why it is important; however, I did not learn why by doing, rather, I was told, over and over again, that editing and revising one’s work is a very important thing. Going over an essay I had in my very first course here at SNHU, I found that I kind of enjoyed doing it because it was like writing another story, or one inside of the one already there in print before me. But I was really …show more content…
only doing what I was told and nothing more. I was missing a lot of the why and the how of what I was doing was going to change everything I had written, or at least the meaning behind it. While doing these things, taking apart my story and putting it back together again like a mad surgeon with a pen instead of a scalpel, I was also reading other people’s stories and taking apart what they were writing, but not putting it back together again like I was doing with my own patient.
I was basically consulting with other mad doctors as they were doing very much the same thing as me. Here, though, I will not lie. I had a bit of personal rivalry going that only I was aware of. Nobody else was in on this thing that I used to drive me for so many weeks. Sure, I was attempting to make my story, Regression be the best that it could be because I wanted it to be that good, otherwise what would be the point of writing in the first place? But while I was reading the other works coming my way, I wanted mine to be the best of the bunch. I would read what the other two writers, classmates both, were writing and I wanted Regression to be something altogether different from what they were doing-and I wanted it to be better. That may seem like something petty, but it is a skill I have acquired
recently. It’s not petty, I don’t think, because I do not wish them ill intent nor do I want their stories to be terrible. Just like there would be no point in writing if I wasn’t trying to make it the best, I wouldn’t want to read (and I really enjoy reading) if I was trying to read a bad story. No, I was not wishing them ill intent. What I was really doing was using their work and their work’s progress to help propel my own work, a reason to strive to be better. I don’t know if that makes sense to anybody else, but it does to me and if it helps me in my work, I’ll take it, and really, I could use all the help I can get. Another of my strengths is that, when I’m working, when I’m writing and attempting to carve a tale out of the ether from which they come, I really get into it and the story invades my head and I don’t think about much else. Ask my girlfriend when she’s asking what I want for dinner or when she is telling me something that she is planning to do, only to bring it up later and I have no idea what she is talking about. More importantly, ask her at midnight when I sit up quickly in bed and she has to get the light because I sleep against the wall, and I ask for paper and pen so I can jot down the thought I just had whilst attempting to sleep. There is a flip side to that aggressive writing, though. I also, more than occasionally, lack motivation to write anything or to try and come up with anything new. My depression, something that, for whatever reason, plagues artists it seems, kicks in and anxiety takes over. One would think that anxiety would get one moving, inspire them to not be anxious, when in fact it does the opposite. It increases laziness. I recently drove down to Southern Illinois for my step-son’s birthday and while I was traveling down I-57 South, looking at all the nothing that I actually enjoy and scanning the road signs while my music pounded into my head (that’s a good thing, trust me), I suddenly had a pretty interesting short story idea and even a title popped into my head. I even know where I want it to take place, specifically, on the I-57 corridor that cuts it’s swath through Illinois and into Missouri. I did not move on this idea while in Southern Illinois as I used that time, and the hotel’s WiFi to do school work from the room while snacking on beef jerky I can’t find anywhere in Northern Illinois. But I haven’t moved on it since. The title is still gnawing at my brains, and the location, but instead of writing it, I finish the entirety of Ken Burns’ World War II, which is incredibly long, but incredibly good. That is a weakness, no, the weakness I have as a writer. If I could somehow get over this slump of anxiety/depression, I would be a beast, writing all of the time. Instead, ideas fester, some are forgotten, and I waste the art in my mind and fingertips. I suppose that I don’t have much more to say other than, I need to keep writing, I need to keep getting these thoughts down to paper, or screen, as it were. I want to write, I want to publish my work in almost any place I can find. I want to inspire others who have a passion for language and storytelling, whether it is writing, painting, filmmaking, or any other way that a tale is told. I want to start a small press to publish, one that hopefully can grow, and become a community for creative people to have their voices heard. Nothing is a pipe dream unless you let it get flushed. Nothing is impossible, mostly, so long as you actually try. I just have to actually do that, and this course has aided in that quest, aided in pushing my mind to the side in order to let what is beneath come out and shine for a little while, however briefly…but very bright!
The art of writing is a complex and difficult process. Proper writing requires careful planning, revision, and proofreading. Throughout the past semester, the quality of my writing has evolved significantly. At first, I struggled with the separation of different types of paragraphs, and I found writing them laborious. Constant practice, however, has eliminated many of my original difficulties, and helped to inspire confidence in my skills. As a collegiate writer, my strength lies in my clear understanding of the fundamentals of writing, while my primary weakness is proofreading my own work.
In “The Maker's Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscript,” Donald Murray explains how the writing process truly begins after a progression of rough drafts. Murray addresses how revising your draft is essential to discovering the real meaning to writing. The purpose of this excerpt is to demonstrate to readers how important revisions can be on improving your writing.
In “The Maker’s Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscript,” Donald M. Murray makes it clear that any individual who writes their first draft is only just beginning the true process of writing. As Murray states, writing is a never ending process that constantly needs new revisions. His main goal of this passage is to allow writers to understand some of the strategies and approaches that come with revising a draft. Murray does provide many supporting evidence to convince a reader of his strategies to be very useful and I agree with this author on improving writers’ writings.
In the beginning of English 101 I was what you call a novice writer a person who only wrote what they felt was required. However, certain techniques that I learned in English 101 made me realize that writing was not about filling requirements; it’s about speaking out, exploring and proving a point. “Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” (Trimble, 17) In John Trimble’s quote he tries to point out that writing is something that you grow with and learn as you go along. I believe this growth was achieved with a technique that was introduced to me by my professor called repetitive revision. What I found out was that revision of your essays helps in recognizing your mistakes and enhances the flow of your essays. By providing me...
According to Donald M. Murray in The Makers Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts “A piece of writing is never finished”. Before this class, I didn’t really revise my essays
Similar to my “one and done” mentality, my lack of revision on my writing pieces is because of meer laziness. Revision is in fact very important because it offers you the chance to look at your writing pieces from a critical perspective. It allows you to analyze all of your points and change anything that needs to be changed for the better. In Shitty First Drafts, I like how Anne Lamott describes this process as dental work. She says, “check every tooth, to see if it 's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy”. This sums up revision in an very alternative and pictorial way. Lamott and Shirley Rose would see eye to eye in the subject of revision because in All Writers Have More To Learn, Rose discusses what I conveyed to be a form of revising called Externalization. Rose states that Externalization allows the writer to see how clearly it reads, what it is conveying, and if it can be improved in any way. In conversation I feel Kathleen Yancey would introduce a similar yet interesting outlook on revising to Rose and Lamott because in Learning to Write Effectively Requires Different Kinds of Practice, Time and Effort, Yancey illustrates revision in the form of seeing if what you wrote was what you thought you were writing and the question of if it will fit with the perception of the audience. I thought that this was a pretty interesting outlook for Yancey to develop in the context of
Writing essays was never my forte, it just never came easy to me like it would to others. Since other subjects came easy to me and I had to focus more than others on writing, I had a negative attitude toward the process as a whole. During this summer semester, I was able to grow as a writer, and gain a more positive attitude toward how I write and a better feel for writing in college. Writing a paper is a process in which there are many different stages. In high school I would never write outlines or any sort of pre planning work. Other struggles I encountered in my writing were my theses, and framing quotes.
English 102 has taught me a lot about my writing. Becoming a better writer and pushing myself to the next level was my goal for this semester. Therefore, I learned how to use research to back up my arguments. We wrote many different essays based on different types of literature, which is something I had not done before. Initially, I had a few problems, but learned from those mistakes to become better at writing. I definitely have things that I need to work on in the future. However, looking back on my semester I have overcome many of my writing obstacles and have become a better writer.
Multiple essays have been formulated during the duration of Composition 1. These essays have taught me an important lesson about my writing, failure is acceptable in order to grow. On the other hand, I made an important discovery last year that I want to study journalism and advance further in that field after college. From taking journalism classes, to blogging in my spare time, to always getting an A on my papers, I thought I had no room to improve. I was mistaken. Therefore, because of the rigorous essay work each essay brought, I learned more about how to write different pieces and grow from my “failure”.
When it comes to revision, I am very lazy and I lack the drive to change my paper drastically. I do exactly what Nancy Sommers, author of the article “Revision Strategies of Student-Writers and Experienced-Writers,” says not to do; I become attached to what I have written. The thought of starting new and throwing out what I have already written ...
this area but I’m going to improve on it. The process of using multiple drafts has
Writing is an important part of everyone’s life, whether we use it in school, in the workplace, as a hobby or in personal communication. It is important to have this skill because it helps us as writers to express feelings and thoughts to other people in a reasonably permanent form. Formal writing forms like essays, research papers, and articles stimulates critically thinking. This helps the writer to learn how to interpret the world around him/her in a meaningful way. In college, professors motivate students to write in a formal, coherent manner, without losing their own voice in the process. Improving your writing skills is important, in every English class that’s the main teaching point; to help students improve their writing skills. Throughout my college experience I have acknowledge that
Throughout the Mid-SEE I have written reflections on my writing and participated in group activities. I have received comments back from my peers and suggestions to help with revising my paper. With the help of my professor, Professor Church and my classmates, I was able to comprehend their suggestions to me to make my essay better and by revising my classmate’s essays, I was able to point out mistakes that I might have made in my essay, which made myself go back to my essay and check and see if I had mistakes that just flew by my eyes.
Writing for me has always been a love and hate relationship since I could remember. Depending on the subject matter that I was writing about I would enjoy it because it suited my style or I loathed it because that specific style was uninteresting and boring to me. Learning certain writing formats were absolutely the worst part about writing when I first started learning in high school. As time pushed on and I grew older I began to develop an appreciation for writing that I did not have before; which is what led me to taking Writing 101 as my first full-fledged college course. I began this course with minimal writing experience because of what I failed to retain before, but now I am a stronger writer than I could have imagined with new skill sets that enhance my professional portfolio.
Taking a creative writing class was a good way for me to express my thoughts and feelings onto paper, as well as read my other classmates stories. Reading stories created by other people lead me into their mind brain to experience what type of writer they were, it was an overall exquisite class. I believe that every person has a way of expressing who they are through writing stories of their own, fiction is the best way to express your creative imagination. This class that I took for two years helped me become a better writer and helped me understand the types of writers we have.