Clarissa
Bradfield
Writing and I have a love-hate relationship I have days where
I am full of ideas and could write for hours and I have days where I can’t
think of a single statement to write. I
however, unlike Ms. Allen and the wonderful people she mentioned I am not a
writer. For me, I am most anxious about my overall content. The writing process
becomes this back and forth battle for me where I write one really strong
paragraph and the next is full of needless repetition and no real point. I
start writing about one idea and all of a sudden that morphs into something not
really related. I get lost while writing and the content gets all blurry.
Sometimes I feel like I could sit down and read one paragraph of my writing and
go “Wow, that the best thing I have ever written” but then if you read it in
the context of my whole paper it loses its value and power.
When I look at it I guess it comes down more to poor planning.
I don’t know how to properly structure my writing so it ends up going back and
forth as I try to give it some structure while I’m writing it. Losing the whole topic I was writing on in the
first place and repeating myself over and over again so I have to stop and
rewrite everything I just wrote. I struggle with composing a good writing as a
whole and not just having basic writing with a few really good parts dispersed
in it somewhere.
I understand how you feel with your writing. I also struggle with the consistency of my paragraphs. Similar to you, I will write a strong paragraph with many ideas and supporting fluff, but the next paragraph will be random sentences that do not flow together and a few poor examples of repetition. What I realized I need to do is if I do not have enough supporting ideas for a paragraph topic, I try to find a new idea for the paragraph that will have better developed sentences around it. This process helps for me and maybe it will help for you too!
ReplyDeleteI wrote about similar struggles with content in my own blog post. I think the best way to improve your content and overall writing is to simply write more. Personally, I start to get into a sort of "flow" a little bit into my paper. Sometimes this means I change the direction the paper is heading. Often times I don't really know how I want the paper to be until I get into this zone of writing. A possible solution, then, would be for me to keep writing and go back after to rework what I wrote in order to form a more coherent paper with better content. Perhaps something along the same line would work for you. If you struggle with your content, simply adding more of it should help. Once you have a bunch of writing down on the page, you can begin to trim down all of the unnecessary stuff and all of the writing that doesn't fit your overall paper's tone. In doing so, your paper should be more complete and coherent overall.
ReplyDeleteI actually find that structure and planning hiders my writing, as counter intuitive as that sounds. I tend to find that writing is an awful lot like fireworks. You know that your lighter is not going to work the first ten times you use it. However, if you keep shaking it and pulling that plastic trigger, you know that eventually it is going to catch. From there, it's just a matter of stepping back and watching you work spring to life. Once you find your cinch, it gets remarkably easy. You just need to sit down, write some terrible first paragraphs, and delete until you find something that your brain latches onto, then, your ideas will be so full of content, fluff and diversion does not become an option.
ReplyDelete