Writing Process Reflection

While actually one of the last assignments in the class, the writing process reflection essay is probably best placed at the beginning of the list, as a sort of introduction. It was one of the most fun essays for me to write: since there were few structural requirements I was able to prattle on about myself with impunity. That not only makes it quite fun for a chatty writer like myself, it also makes it perfect for publication in this blog. After all, blogs pretty much exist solely for people to prattle on about themselves with impunity. It's what makes them so magical.


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Writing Process Refection


For my age, I’m fairly confident in my writing abilities. I’ve got quite a ways to go if I want to pick up the pen professionally, but I have plenty of confidence in my ability to get there.

The dirty little secret about my current writing process is that I don’t really have one. Well, that’s not true- it can’t be true, really- but this “process” is currently little more than writing down what feels fitting as I go along. I’ll rarely think more than a few paragraphs ahead, and drafting is pretty much unheard-of. I’m aware that, were I to learn to draft more properly, my overall quality of work could well improve, but I just don’t feel like so dramatically altering my style at this time, and I’d much rather let my feel for writing pull me to other techniques than force myself into foreign territory.

This all sounds dreadfully lazy, and perhaps it’s so, but as a writer, I, often subconsciously put a very heavy focus on how things like sentences, paragraphs, and statements feel. Ten-plus years of moderate to heavy reading have given me a very specific sense for what I think certain sentences should sound like, as well as a near-abhorrence of repetition (as an example, I was going to write “specific feel” earlier in this sentence, but then noticed its proximity to the “feel” a sentence before, pulled up Dictionary.com, and plugged “feel” into the thesaurus). I gain an altogether unhealthy amount of enjoyment from humorous linguistic antics, from the wittily crafted satires of Dickens to the cutting, verbose rants of Jerry Holkins (the often mouthy but undeniably sharp co-creator of Penny Arcade, a videogame-centric comic), and I often attempt to use their, and others’, style of humor for inspiration of my own- this has met with varying degrees of success.

Because of my taste for thesauruses and wordy, linguistically-minded compositions, writing dry, opinion-less facts and business-like papers, much as I respect the dominance of fact over opinion, is not my strong suit. It’s not an unmanageable task by any means, but I tend to enjoy it a good deal less than my more verbal indulgences.

Despite my love of linguistics, however, my ability to spot grammatical incongruities is incomplete. While it’s nothing that a little extra internet and/or textbook research wouldn’t fix, it’s still worth noting here that I’m still not always 100% positive about the correct and incorrect use of punctuation, especially when it’s being used around quotation marks and parentheses.

Honestly, I don’t think there’s much else to say. My greatest strength, and my greatest weakness, is my love of flowing, often verbose sentences and fine-tuning the structure of writing itself. While these tendencies make my works more enjoyable to read, they do, occasionally, come at the price of a reduced focus on the actual content of the work. I’m usually able, I think, to rein in my style often enough to keep a fairly decent narrative or explanation going, but learning to control them better can only help me in the future.

As it is, though, I really like thesauruses. I do.