Write as Well as You Can

It is hard to believe 8 weeks has slipped by and it is time for my final blog.

I especially enjoyed Zinsser's text this week. I really liked what he had to say about making your writing entertaining. It was helpful to see in what ways I can accomplish this. It was one paragraph, but that one paragraph holds a lot of great tips, including how these bits of entertainment become your style. You need to give your reader amusement, and this is usually “an enjoyable surprise” (Zinsser, 297). These amusements become our style and our style is our personality. Through this week’s readings, I have learned you cannot let someone take that away.

The idea of ownership of my own writing, of workshopping, editing and people telling me what to do in my own text...

I found Zinsser and Graham’s words on editing helpful. Being a novice writer, I have no idea how the whole editing process works. Although, I do see now how workshopping was indeed a form of editing. It is good to know that if I am confident in my work, I should defend my work. I learned through the workshopping that it is very helpful to have other sets of eyes looking at my writing. I also found that as a professor, you often gently suggested ideas. There were instances I took your suggestion, and a few that I didn’t when I thought my work said what I wanted, the way I wanted it to, and changing it would have affected that. I think that was one of the points Zinsser was making—don’t “sell out.” Just because you’ve received the payment for your work, it is still your work. It is not okay to allow someone to make changes to the point you don’t even recognize a piece as your own.

I think it’s important to allow an editor to keep you focused, to give you feedback, to have an “objective eye” (Zinsser, 299) that will help you improve your text. As I said in one of my process memos, it is so easy to get too close to a piece of your own writing. It’s an editor’s job to make sure your text has clarity. I found that an important part of workshopping. Even though I thought something made perfect sense the way I had written it, if even one other person doesn’t get it, I need to clarify. A point Zinsser made that stuck with me, is when allowing an editor to do his/her job, it is important not to let someone edit out your distinctiveness. I would think all of these suggestions start making more sense once a writer has entered the world of publication.

To sum up what Zinsser said, and what I will take away from this class--own your work. Believe in yourself and your writing. “You will only write as well as you make yourself write” (Zinsser) How true! If I want to get lazy and skip some revising, it won’t be as good as it could be. Work, and then work harder.




.

My writing

****I had trouble posting this to the blog last night****It was posted to DDB prior to deadline : )

This is a tough one for me, because other than this class I haven’t done any writing. I love reading, the written word, grammar, all of it—everything about it. To hone in on a particular writing experience and isolate a single experience when I enjoyed the process and the final product will require me to use this class as my foundation.

There were two essays that I enjoyed writing more than the other two. The first essay, my personal essay, was a piece I really enjoyed. I haven’t hammered it out to a final product yet, but thus far in the process I would say it’s my favorite. I think it’s because in writing about me, it is obviously a topic I know well. Having said that, the purse snatching was a traumatic experience in my life that I hadn’t ever put down on paper. I had saved the newspaper articles and editorials, and I thought it was cool to combine how other’s perceived the incident and wrote about it, with my own thoughts and using my style to tell the story. That piece, along with this blog, has given me a push to continue journaling. I have lots of stories, and after finally putting pen to paper and getting it written, I think a few of them would work nicely as essays. What thrills, excites or satisfies me was to see how it flowed, how I told the story from my perspective. For the first time, although it was an assignment, it was my words, without having to research and use others as references. I could use my own thoughts and insights.

The second essay that I really enjoyed was writing about my friend Joanne, a race-walking Olympian. Even though she is my friend, I removed myself enough to write what I thought turned into a solid piece without too much bias. I felt satisfied getting fourteen years of her experiences into a short essay. I am not yet completely satisfied with the piece, I have some tweaking to do, but I feel like when it’s finished it is good enough to share with others, and Joanne herself. I enjoyed writing about someone I know, she has such a great story to tell. I liked that I could put her story into words.

Coming into this class, I was intimated and thought about dropping the course. I felt like I was way out of my league with students who had more experience and therefore “belonged” in the class. I don’t feel like that now. I feel like I can write well enough to put it out there, and I’m tough enough to take any criticism, because it will make my work stronger. My writing prior to this class has only been for assignments, so only the professor has read my work. It is nice to have something I am comfortable with and confident enough to share. For me, that is a thrill and a huge personal accomplishment.

I found I can write and enjoy it! I really get what it means to enjoy what you’re writing about or others won’t enjoy reading it. I can truly say that the vulnerability I felt when I posted my first essay knowing other people would actually read it, has lessened. I still feel it, but I also started getting a sense for when I wrote something well and also when I slacked on a paragraph or two. It’s interesting to see that if you feel like you’re not on the mark, chances are you should re-work it, as others will pick up on that as well.

Learning to Interview

My friends Zinsser and Graham give tips this week about writing about people, using interview techniques, and how to illustrate with anecdotes. I am struggling a bit with this whole interview process. The tips in the book are helpful, but I think until I dive into it, it won’t make sense or be complete. I found Zinnser’s basic advice “Get people talking” helpful. I’ve got to ask the right questions that will in turn give me answers that are interesting not just to the speaker, but to my audience as well. I haven’t done any literary journalism up to this point, so once again I’ll be treading new waters. I think the main point zinsser’s trying to get across is even a topic that sounds incredibly boring can be turned into something special. By pushing ourselves as writiers out into the real world, we can choose a sjbuject who has a job that is important, interesting or unusal will interest the average reader. “Graham tells us that anecdotes are brief factual stories that illustrate some aspect of the article’s thesis. They allow you to put people ionto your article even if you are primarily writing about things or concepts. I would love to be able to incorporate both Zinsser’s and Graham’s tips to come up with an interesting interview.

“I can’t wait to have my own choices to make, my own decisions. I will not ever go to another AA meeting because I have been forced to go. It is degrading to get a signature to prove I’ve been here. I will never again ask to use a bathroom. I’m a 49 year old professional woman who took a couple wrong turns. ” These words echoed in my head as I drove a homeless woman to a local AA meeting. “ I know I screwed up, but I’m tired of being surrounded by people with no ambition and not teeth. That’s not me. I had a good job, making six figures, a husband, a house full of antiques, a car and pets.” “I just want my life back” I picked Mary up from the local women’s shelter, and as always, she was pulled together looking more like she was going out to dinner, rather than into a hall at a local center. We drive, using the 10-minute distance to the meeting as a time to catch up on the week’s events. How did Mary survive being out on the streets every day this week, like every other week, from 8 to 4, as they are not allowed to stay at the Shelter during the day? Mary talks quietly, voice often quivering, but always with conviction. “I just can’t do this anymore. I have had enough of all this. I’ve learned every lesson I’m supposed to learn and now I want my life back. Even though Mary is homeless, divorced, and jobless, has no car and had to give up her cats to the local humane society, she holds optimism about a job prospect. “This is not just about getting the job,” she said, head down, eyes watering, “it’s about getting my life back.”

Over the hump...week 5

Hmmmmm, I understand the purpose of this blog and realize it won’t be easy. How often we slip into those overused, as Zinsser calls “syrupy words.” Here’s my attempt at describing where I prefer to do my writing and homework. Yes, it is “cozy” and “small” and usually “quiet” I’ll try to give you details without using the overused adjectives. Let me grab a cup of tea and venture out to my writing space. Welcome to my home…

I live in what my kids and I affectionately call “The Mouse House.” Not a lot of extra space, hardly enough needed space. A 900 square for starter house that turned into my finisher house. In order to get away from the din of the TV, white noise from the refrigerator, the sounds of guns firing from the video games, I work on my laptop in the comfortably confined space of my sun porch. It used to be the mudroom, a place to stash cleats and sports equipment, a dumping ground of sorts. After removing all the debris, and slapping on a coat of “tranquility” paint, I had a start to my very own space. My favorite thing about the room is the gliding settee. My son and his friend were unwillingly pulled into an activity they were not familiar with. Dumpster Diving. One Sunday afternoon on the way home from the soccer field, I spotted a must have accessory for my room, best of all, free! After wrestling it into the minivan, we got it home and onto the porch. Perfect!

When I step onto my porch, I get an instant feeling of peace. The windows allow nature to transcend into my space. There are days I have natural light to work in, but some days I’m very content to sit with the sound of the rain running through the gutters, or to be able to look out into a cloudy sky for inspiration. I get to see the seasons change, and notice bits of nature that would otherwise go unnoticed. Like most writers and students, I tend to let my mind wonder and focus on anything but the task at hand. It is a gift from Mother Nature to sit and bask in her beauty while trying to shake off writer’s block, or avoid a mathematical equation.

I usually find myself sitting on my settee, coffee on my side table—another curbside find—working on my laptop. My laptop sits on a table similar to a TV tray, but it can be set at different heights. I tried to find something curbside that would fit my needs. I ended up buying it at Rite Aid for $14.99. That is the most expensive piece of furniture on the porch. There is a single wooden chair, purchased at a yard sale for $2, painted the same shade of “tranquilty” green and matches my dumpster diving items. A braided rug and a spider plant that has outgrown its pot are the finishing touches on my personal writing space.