Wednesday, December 13, 2006

On Writing At All.

Writin' essays, again.

Not the world's biggest fan of writing essays, me, but I do it. It's my job, as an English Major.

Used to be, I couldn't do it. Almost flunked out of high school 'cause I couldn't write essays. It wasn't that I hadn't the skills... I haven't the patience. I used to think essays had to be a certain way (which is to say, the way I was taught to write them): dry, serious, organized, and brilliant. And so writing essays hurt.

I'm not kidding. It hurt. Not like getting stabbed in the gut, but like getting stabbed in the brain from within the brain. Either you understand perfectly, or I can never hope to explain it.

It took me until my Junior year in college to realize that that's not the only way to write an essay. I can ramble... I can use extended metaphors... hell, I can tell jokes. Some teachers don't like it, but I've found that most of the time, they appreciate something amusing in the midst of all the dry. And if they don't... such points lost for unprofessionalism are made up for by the fact that the project gets done at all, I think.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Honestly Ed, If I were your teacher, I would look foward to reading your essay. You do a fantastic job of keeping it interesting and informative.

12/14/2006 9:13 AM  
Blogger Vincent Avatar said...

I think that the moment when I realized that I could get away with writing like I wanted to, essays became infinitely more interesting to me. That isn't to say that I enjoy them; for the most part, it remains an uninteresting task. But the fact that I'm not trying to cram myself into a pre-made mold certainly helps relieve some of the drudgery.

12/14/2006 10:25 AM  

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