The whole idea of writing, especially when it will be
critiqued, sends anxious waves through me.
Will it be what the teacher wants?
Will I get a good grade? Will it
make sense? To date, I’ve not had the
opportunity, or taken the time, to write anything for the sheer experience of
writing. I’m not a journal keeper so
I’ve only really written for class assignments.
Part of the anxiety comes from the unknown in that each teacher I had
seemed to have their own style and agenda as to how students should write. Just as soon as I figured out one teacher’s
writing “requirements,” the teacher changed and I found myself writing in a
different style to meet their expectations.
Probably one of my main concerns or anxieties in
writing is the organizational aspect. I
have many ideas rolling around in my brain and I’m not sure how to write them
all down in a non-rambling, non-repetitive way.
A bad habit has been to focus on how many words are required or the
assignment itself rather than how I’m communicating through my writing. When I
think about the length, I tend to repeat myself. The overall flow of ideas is then
lacking. Even now as I write, my mind is
wandering to the word count. My thoughts
are also shifting to what others will think of my writing. So I guess I’m anxious about many aspects
regarding my writing. As freshmen, we
all come from different experiences, schools and educations, and because of
this, I’m also wondering about whether my writing abilities are up to the standard
of everyone else’s. Until I wrote this last sentence, I hadn’t realized how
many anxieties actually surround my writing abilities. I’m not sure though, if writing anxiety is
any different from all the other anxieties that are now being felt as a freshman
in college, away from home, living with strangers and in trying to find my way
through a jungle of new classes and professors.
In any case, it was nice to read that Sarah Allen, a writer, can also be
riddled with writing anxiety.
Alexander, I too sometimes have a lot of trouble when it comes to organization. Like you said, there's times when a ton of ideas are circulating through are heads and it is difficult to focus on one aspect. Something that usually tends to help me is writing all my ideas down and then asking a parent for advice and input because they've done much more writing then we have in life. Making an outline before you write can also be very helpful
ReplyDeleteI agree with the struggles of organizing your paper. When you feel that you are having good ideas and you are writing away your just writing idea after idea. As your writing it you may think it sounds good, until you go back and read what you wrote. When this happens to me I find that I just wrote down many ideas and they can be rearranged into a better order. This will affect the flow of your writing, so what I normally do is go back and reread things as many times as necessary.
ReplyDeleteThe struggle of organization is a big one that I think a lot of people including myself deal with when writing a paper. I've found that after I'm done writing as much as I can if I read it out loud then I can find where I've missed punctuation or made other mistakes and then I can also decide does this sound good this way or would it be better if I switched some of the wording or moved things around. It's almost as if you're working on a puzzle after you've had the flow of ideas you just move the pieces around until you find the best fit. I hope this helped.
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