Writer 's block has been a major problem for me in the past. I enjoy writing, but sometimes it is had to know what to say. I have tried many different ways to over come my writer 's block. Some ways were successful, others were not.
Anne Lamott 's essay, “Shitty First Drafts” explains to its readers that all writers, even the best, can have “shitty first drafts.” The essay presents the proper writing process from the first draft to the final piece of work. Her essay is intended to encourage writers who are in need of direction when it comes to writing and to teach inexperienced writers ways to become more successful in writing. Anne Lamott uses her personal experiences to build credibility, figurative language to engage the reader and provides the reader with logical steps for the writing process.
In her essay "Does Texting Affect Writing?", Michaela Cullington presents her argument that texting does not impact formal writing written by students. She discusses the concerns presented by many people about how texting language can transfer into writing, but through the use of personal experiences and credible sources she discusses how this is not true. Her use of multiple different studies and situations help boost her argument and allow the reader to truly see how students actually do formal writing. She presents a strong argument as to why those who believe students don't have the control and knowledge to write formally, instead of with text speak, are wrong.
One of the proudest moments of my life came in 2012 when I received my Associate of Arts degree and graduated as the class valedictorian. I realize that for some people earning a two year degree may seem like no big deal, but the fact that I did it while incarcerated at San Quentin made it extraordinary for me. Before coming to prison, I had failed at my two previous attempts at junior college without earning a single unit. It would take getting locked up and separated from society,before I 'd start to buckle down. I was 33-years old when I completed my first Coastline College course in Geology and received an A. This milestone helped me to see the value in learning and gave me the confidence to go after an education I had all but given up on.
Throughout some point in our education, every student has gone through this dreaded moment. That moment where the screen is blank and there is nothing. When it is impossible to think of anything to put done. I, myself, have gone through writer’s block dozens of times. I think it was at its worst during my younger years.
I thought I was among the few that experienced writer’s block and struggled to learn how to correctly structure and articulate my thoughts. Allen’s The Inspired vs The Real Writer was overall very eye opening for me. It helped me realized that not every writer loves writing 100% of the time. My favorite parts of the article were where Allen told of her own experiences whilst trying to begin to write. I liked these parts because they added a personal touch behind her argument that helped it come across as more believable. Adding her own experiences provided a genuine counter argument to the common misconceptions people have about writers, and this was the most influential and persuasive part of the article, to me. This ties into previous readings we’ve had because they all stick with the same theme that writing does not come easy and you may not even realize you like it. This is illustrated in Writing with Super Pencil by Dylan DuLac. DuLac loved writing comics as a young child, but as schooling mindlessly controlled his writing and limited it to boring essays he didn’t have true emotion behind, he began to lose interest in it, until later in his life when he writes this piece. Basically, he hit a few bumps in the road when he was younger, but he eventually came back around and began to write again. This ties in well with Sarah Allen’s work because it was not easy for him. He didn’t like writing in school,
Prominent American painter and photographer, Chuck Close, once remarked “All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.” Mr. Close wasn’t a writer, but his process-oriented mindset can be helpful in every line of work. The finest outcomes are created by those who do not cut corners to arrive at the conclusion prematurely. Students often become lost and overwhelmed by tasks which don’t have a predetermined outcome. We were raised to find the quickest way possible to complete a task and then execute that plan. We aren’t taught to just begin a task without an exact goal in mind. But this method can sometimes lead to the discovery of an even greater reward. In today’s society, we as writers are trained from an early age to reach a set objective by any means necessary. But when looking back on this concept, aren’t we missing the whole point of completing the assignment in the first place? In this paper, I will adopt this notion of starting a piece of writing without a specific end result in mind, in the hopes of discovering myself as a writer and developing a powerful paper in the process.
It’s the rush of adrenaline flowing through my veins that first gets to me. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest, as my excitement levels rise to unaccountable amounts. I feel my body tense up as my breathing becomes deep and elongated, the longer I wait for the sooner I will pass out from containing myself, containing my joy. For most people writing is a task, a simple school assignment, a normal Saturday afternoon spent wasting away, staring at a blank screen with a blinking black line, as it taunts you. However, to me, writing is a way to connect to the outside world, a way to make my dreams become reality. A beautiful escape from a mundane life.
As I began to read in week one Unteaching the Five Paragraph Essay by Marie Foley, I was reminded of the importance of how writing lends to reading, which in turn infers absorbing the content. Writing is essential to not only education but in connecting through this form of communication as well. Appropriately, this was addressed again by John Dewy in Democracy and Education in 1916. I found it interesting that this subject matter written about so long ago is still prevalent today.
The Upper Article confused me very much at first. It took me a few minutes to figure out that the article having no words was the point of describing what happens with writer's block. I belive that this happens to almost everyone at one point in time when writing an essay. One may go to begin to write a paper and then all of a sudden, the mind tends to go blank. The individual in question may know about the topic but for some reason there is something about starting essays that seems so difficult to do. Upper perfectly illustrated the effects of writer's block; which is a blank page. I know that for me, starting off a paper is always the hardest part of the entire assignment.
My primary destination was to fulfill the English requirement to complete my degree, but in the meantime, it has become my focus to improve my composition accomplishments. Writing composition for me is a scary feeling, especially at the university level. Getting word to write papers is fairly new to me and very intimidating. One of the most difficult things to overcome is writer’s block, hence the reason it took me a few months to submit my first assignment. I was always afraid of the mistakes I would make in grammar, or not have anything to write in my essays. Once I started writing, although it was very challenging I managed to complete them, as I sensed it was an important skill to possess. I also believed it would help me to become a more proficient writer for my other courses, therefore, I wanted to complete this course of study prior to the other classes. What I didn't comprehend was that this course would also make me a more self-assured individual. In new situations, it always makes me a bit
As with all figures of speech, you first need to determine your tone. Consider for a moment the excerpt from the introduction:
I anticipated senior year to pass by smoothly. Unfortunately during wrestling practice, I positioned my footing wrong and broke the fibula of my ankle. After a surgical operation on my ankle, I was brought home. I laid there on my bed, bored of watching Supernatural; therefore, I decided to pick up the laptop and surf the web. The reason that I was brought to a site about writing was unclear, but I was interested in honing my writing techniques. In order to grab attention, my voice in my writings has to be decent. So I began immediately to focus the time in my bed in developing my writing skills. I thought this motive will last only for one day.
Oops! Not again! It seems every time you write a paragraph you mess up, with the most obvious mistakes, like comma misplacing, transitions, conventions, and sentence fluency. In the past I have made quite a few mistakes in my writing. Hopefully, I can fix my weaknesses. First of all, sentence fluency. Trying to phrase something that is very hard to phrase can be somewhat difficult. I can try to improve this weakness of mine by writing what I need to phrase on paper first, then work with it for a while until I figure it out. Next, I really need to work on conventions; I need to know where to put commas. One way I can improve is, I can be more careful and alert. Another way I can be more aware of where I put my commas is by proofreading and making
There are times when I sit down at my laptop and the words seem to flow as easily as faucet onto the page, the sentences almost form themselves on those days. Then there are other days when I sit down and writing is the worst thing in the entire world—the faucet is as dry as an open desert and finding words is like scavenging for