mid term

“Everything you write has to seem good to you and just get it out. Let it inspire you to the next sentence and the next scene and the next character. And in that way, you discover what your story is. But if you're looking over your own shoulder all the time, crossing every other sentence out, and holding every other word up to the light as you're composing, that can lead you to become kind of constipated as a writer.” This is an excerpt from Tobias Wolff’s passage which shows a very common rule of writing. Basically what Wolff says throughout his passage is that when writing a person should get out all of their ideas and thoughts in the first draft and later edit their writing as if using a fine toothed comb. If a person starts out revising every sentence they write, nothing gets accomplished and the good thought are lost. There are many experiences from my first quarter in Writing 101, in which I can identify with Wolff’s description of writing and also a few that don’t support this view.

One part of Wolff’s view that I can identify with is when He said “Everything you write has to seem good to you and just get it out. Let it inspire you to the next sentence and the next scene and the next character. And in that way, you discover what your story is” This to me means that a person should get everything out on paper, without being judgmental of their writing or double checking what they’ve written. It means a person should let the writing flow. This way their paper can develop into a well composed rough draft. The way I can identify with this is by an experience I had writing a paper about my hero. I started out this paper by judging every sentence I wrote, unsure if I was including the requirements. By writing this way I sounded robotic and wasn’t telling my story. I wasn’t letting my writing flow or develop into the story I actually wanted to tell. After realizing this I took a pen and paper and rapidly wrote everything I was thinking the way it happened. I jotted down sentence after sentence without any hindrance. This experience of mine coincides with Wolff’s description of good writing, and is something I believe is the first step in developing a great paper.

Another point I can identify with Wolff is, “Later on, you have to look at your work with a very cold eye, as if you were editing someone else's.” I can identify with this quote because I believe that after a writer gets everything written down, they should go back and edit their paper very harshly. In my experience with writing the hero story, I learned it is important to edit your paper not only for spelling but for many other aspects as well. It is important that the writer keeps the reader in mind by making sure they have a hook, good description and a clear thesis. The writer should edit the paper as if It is someone else’s because although the writer may like their story, there may be bits and pieces in the story that doesn’t necessarily add to the paper and should be taken out. I used to not edit my own papers as harshly as others, but through this experience, I have learned that editting mine harsher is essential to writting a good paper.