What are you most anxious about, when writing? For example do you worry most about grammar and mechanics? About organization? About the deadline? About page length? Why?
I am anxious over how to think critically and come up with an idea, or point of view, that is not very common. I have almost always been able to find the common themes and ideas behind any story, but struggle to find the deeper ideas. I was usually the first one in class to respond to a question, but my responses rarely seemed to have the kind of depth that my instructors were looking for. I only seemed to be able to find the more complicated ideas after several hours of writing a paper and re-reading the same parts of the story a few times. I also have some issues with transferring the ideas from my head to paper, and having the ideas flow in a clear and logical order. I can often create a great story line in my head, and have every detail planned out , but hit major writers block when it comes to laying everything out on paper. Lengthy research papers usually take me twice as much time and effort, because of how much trouble I encounter when organizing my ideas in a way that makes sense. I had one teacher that would playfully refer me as her "adopted son", because of how much time I would spend after class asking for assistance. Grammar and mechanics are both on the list of things that interfere with my writing. No matter how much time I seem to spend proof reading my paper, I have to share my drafts with other people to catch the mistakes that I could never find. It is such a basic concept in writing but it is one that always gives me grief. I am eager to use this year to improve on my weaknesses and strengthen my writing skills.
I am exactly the same about not finding the deeper ideas. In high school we were doing a lot of close analysis with my teacher on very small passages of a book or on poems. I could also understand and find the basic ideas and themes of these passages but in the beginning I was very surprised of the quantity of "more hidden things" the teacher could find and explain. But with a lot of practice I got much better. If I could give you an advice it would be to read different analysis on different papers you have read.
ReplyDeleteAnd about not having the ideas flow in a clear and logical order, I also have this problem and it's still there...