Summary
In Sarah Allen's article "The Inspired Writer vs the Real Writer", she gives a first hand account of stories (as what I understood to be an English teacher) and how she explains basically that anyone who says "writing just flows from me, or writing is easy" is either lying or not REALLY writing. Her 10 page rant can be summed up in the saying "If you have at any point in your life sat at 11:30 pm on a Sunday night with a paper due on Monday morning, and wondered if at anypoint the perfect thesis or the perfect intro was just going to spring into your mind- or why it wasn't, for that matter-- then you are REAL WRITER. Everyone else who claims to be able to just sit down and crank out a paper, with no writer's block, or frustration- is clearly either Rain Man (writing edition.)
My Thoughts
I most definitely agree with Allen in that writing wasn't invented to be easy. We are only as good as the words we know. And thus, we can only communicate through the words we know- and our writing can only mirror our feelings and the points we would like to get across via those words we know. And this is difficult. In my opinion, half the difficulty of writing is the fear or anxiety that the teacher isn't going to like what I turn in. At the end of the day, let's admit: we are not writing to express ourselves, or because we so passionately want to share with the world our ability to form a 5 paragraph essay, we write because it is assigned to us! We write not to express ourselves, we write to please the prof, and get that A. She is absolutely right that the vision of a "good writer" is slurred by people's belief that good writers can write about anything, anywhere at any time, with ease- and it is going to be absolutely inspiring and flawless. I agree with her completely. Yes.
However, did I find it necessary to (let's be honest here.) use my long weekend to read this? Not exactly. I do believe that her points, and examples could have been condensed and even made more effective if the paper was shorter. About halfway in I caught myself drifting into la-la land, and pondering the questions "man, how many more pages of this? and wow, I still have to read out of the writing about writing book...I wonder if it's going to snow this week?" I highlighted points and details that I thought to be important to me understandind (and remembering for Wednesday) what I read...and the fact that I went without highlighting for 2 pages at a time, says a lot in my mind.
Discussion Questions
1. When writing, I get most anxious about whether or not the teacher is going to understand my view, or like the way inwhich I organized my points/quotes/every little detail. I do not worry about grammar and mechanics. In fact, if anything, that puts me at ease, because I know that I have a good eye for mistakes like grammar/punctuation/spelling, and those types of things are the first to go when I do a revision of my paper. Organization always worries me because I have always felt that it is like a secret that only the teacher knows as to how he/she wants to papers to flow- and you won't find out if you hit the nail on the head until you get your paper back. I have pretty good time management skills so I map out my papers by saying i'm going to write so many words this day, then X amount the next day, then editing this day. So that I am not up the night before staring at a blank computer screen with one eye and jealously watching my roommate sleep with the other. Length is rarely something that I struggle with (just look at this post...) However, it does happen. When I am writing about a subject that I'm not particularly a fan of- it is surely harder to write a lengthy paper on.
2. When sharing writing with classmates, I am usually nervous that they are going to point out a weird mistake I made such as "didn't you know we were supposed to use X margin? or didn't you know the citation was due along with the rough draft today?" (Basic little details that I may have overlooked in the assignment. When the teacher reads my paper I usually fear critiques including "Why didn't you follow the paragraph formula?" or "you're digressing in this entire page. bring it back to the topic." I have never really worried about anyone thinking my ideas are stupid, but more invalid, or unsupportive to the topic. I tend to veer off the road with my papers into thoughts and examples that make sense in my scatter brain, yet probably have no revelence to the topic.
3. These questions are related in that proving most writing related anxieties are self-causing and due to the fear of reaction. We are writing to please the teacher in the long run, but "peer edits on Wednesday" is flashing in the back of your mind. And questions arise such as "Is the teacher going to recollect our papers and randomly distribute them? God. I hope they dont. I hate that. What if So & SO gets my paper-- they're going to laugh at this part...should I even put it in?!" And before you know it, you're psyching yourself out about a hypothetical situation.
4. To address these anxieties, I would basically tunnel vision the end result: to get a good grade. My English teacher senior year encouraged his students to keep the prof in mind when we are writing. Because at the end of the day, they're the one with the red pen and the password to blackboard that will decide our fate. And that is what I have done thus far and it has worked out pretty well. Also, you can't sweat peer evaluations, because other than them finding grammatical mistakes, they don't know anymore about an A paper than you do. That is why theyre taking the class with you, not teaching it. So your attempt at a well written paper is just as good as theirs. As far as the deadline anxieties go, you really need to make a game plan early on in the assignment so it doesn't build up. Map out the paper (yes, make a concept map like you did in 3rd grade if that's what it takes) then go from there. If the paper is 1000 words and you have a week to write it, do 150/day then take the extra time to look it over/do your citation. It's all about having a plan and STICKING TO THE PLAN.
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