Ok so this is a reflection essay we had to do for my college Eng101 class. We had to talk about how our writing improved throughout the semester and also about a rewrite for one of our essays. Any reviews appreciated!
I was infected with Amor deliria nervosa for books at a very young age. There are few things that make me happier than reading does. But somehow my love for the written word never managed to transform itself into love for creating it. Not for the lack of trying though--the remnants of my NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program project from when I was in high school are proof of this. Writing for the sake of writing was just not my thing. But this semester completely changed that. Besides the fact that my writing improved in every aspect, starting from the thought process right up to the actual execution of the idea, I actually started to like writing. Taking this class along with joining the Young Writers Society reawakened the part of me that used writing as a creative outlet and reveled in the power that came with the art of stringing words together to capture a fleeting thought within the pages of a book. As shown further in the essay, the improvement in my writing was threefold. First was improvement in thought process and formation of ideas, second was in the process of writing itself, and the third was in general conventions such as punctuation.
But before I proceed, a word about the Young Writers Society. This site has been as helpful, if my not more, as taking this class has. My twelve-year old sister, who over the summer had blossomed into a really good poet (and by good, I mean really good. I had no idea my younger sister possessed such a level of maturity), begged me to join. Since I never wrote much, I did not see the point of joining it. In the week before my first English essay was due, I really was desperate for critical reviews that came from people other than my sister, my roommate, or my friends. I joined Young Writers society as a last resort. Never did I think then that it would become such an integral part of my life. Today, I do not think my day would be complete without me checking in at least twice a day. Since I joined YWS almost within a month of the start of the semester, I think I can say that my class and that went hand in hand for improvement of my writing.
The first thing that was different from my high school writing was that for each of our essays, we had to submit drafts to a deadline. It helped my writing process by reducing the writing time to a length such that I did not procrastinate till the day before the due-date, but enough for me to do my ideas justice. Further, outlining helped me organize my thoughts and ideas into a more coherent framework than my usual method of haphazard free-writing. Thus, my writing improved just by changing the thought process behind it.
Another major issue with my second essay was development. My thesis talked about the use of five specific poetic devices and I developed the PIE paragraphs for each of them separately in such a way that when I put it all together in an essay, the flow was fragmented and one thought did not lead to the other. Here is an example of the last line of one paragraph and beginning of the next one from my final draft: “These symbols, unlike that of the sun, point an accusing finger at man. The poem is divided into two parts by the tense used.” I made the transition smoother by inserting this sentence between the above two: “Further accusation comes in the form of the division of the poem”. This flaw in development in turn showed a major flaw in my writing process—that I tend to drop ideas a lot, without allowing for the idea to develop fully and transition properly into the next one.
Apart from my writing process, my writing itself became more coherent by improving upon conventions like punctuation. If being on YWS has taught me anything, it is that punctuation is something that every good writer gets right. Commas, semicolons, m-dashes, n-dashes, hyphens may all sound easy--but perfecting them takes effort. For example, as is seen from the drafts of my first essay, I never got my m- and n-dashes right: “The point to be noted here, is that Harrison Bergeron could have - given his intellectual abilities- remained hidden and undiscovered- for the length of his life- even started an underground rebellion if he had wanted to- yet he chose to walk into a TV studio unarmed…” I corrected it in this way for my final draft : “The point to be noted here, is that Harrison Bergeron could have given his intellectual abilities—remained hidden and undiscovered for the length of his life, even started an underground rebellion if he had wanted to—yet he chose to walk into a TV studio unarmed...” Also, as pointed out by my professor for my second essay, I tend to omit the comma before and/or/but when listing sets of three or more. I corrected this in my revision essay in the following manner: “The tone is dark, desperate, and disturbing”.
Lastly, a word about poetry. We did the poetry unit about the same time as I started discovering the wonders of YWS. I was never a big fan of reading poetry written by someone who was not published. But YWS showed me how wrong I was. The site is oozing with talent. Reading the critiques on the submitted works helped me see how every poem can be interpreted in a million different ways depending on individual perspective and context. Also, for the first time, we were not told the meaning of the poem but allowed the freedom of arriving at it ourselves. This, more than anything, really helped me rediscover my interest in writing—and this time it was for the writing-for-the-sake-of-writing kind.
Gender:
Points: 497
Reviews: 11