"A Little Bit of Sue Perb" by Sue Perb

“Every author, in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.” --Goethe

When I first started writing, I was taught how to be a cookie cutter. If you fill in these blanks, they told me, you will get an A. And so I did fill in the blanks. But I was bored with that. So in between doing exactly what I was told, I tried to think of a sentence-one phenomenal sentence- that incorporated me into my work. As I grew older, my writing process grew longer. I particularly focused on getting rid of words I don’t need. I’m still growing as a writer today, and I still incorporate a little bit of Sue into everything that I write. From a young age, probably 11, I was taught formatting. Put the assertion up front. Write that in blue. Put the evidence in next. Write that in red. Your details go last. Write those in yellow. I have vivid memories of fifth grade color coded essays. Each student’s essay looked identical. I truly believed that that was how it was supposed to be.

It was around that time that I stopped enjoying writing. Writing had transformed from a hobby to a chore. In each essay, however, I tried to add exciting adjectives or maybe a sentence that, although it wasn’t on topic, added a little something extra, a little something Sue, to the paper. In ninth grade English, some diversity was offered. Mrs. Jewell told us to include our own ideas into our papers, but it seemed that I had forgotten how to do that. I had turned into the little boy from A Wrinkle in Time. I was still trying to bounce my ball exactly like all the other little boys, but there was something wrong with me. I was imperfect, and everything was at stake.

In the tenth grade I began my career in the writing center. Our first assignment was exactly this one. Use a given quotation to describe your writing process. Through that assignment, I discovered my love-hate relationship with writing. I would jump for joy when a new project was announced, but I would soon be in the gutter when I realized that thinking in a new way was harder than I expected. When discussing academic writing, I simply stated “Writing is not my friend.” And my 14 page Writing in the Discipline research essay was about as far from a friend that I could get.

When discussing personal writing, however, I used positive adjectives such as “pure” and “perfect”. I felt overjoyed when I got to interview Keith Naquin, a local artist, for a profile piece. I was so excited and nervous that I was probably glowing, just so that all my energy had somewhere to go. In my writing reflection, I discovered that there were some good parts of writing and some bad parts. I also discovered that I liked writing when it was easy, but if I couldn’t relate to the topic or the topic didn’t interest me, I got discouraged easily, and became negative. Although my reflection about my writing offered fresh ideas, it was sloppy. It seemed that after madman, I touched on architect, lingered on carpenter, and skipped judge all together. Nothing about my paper seemed holistic. I had a million separate thoughts, none of which related to my topic. I was like I was a kid in a candy shop, frozen with sheer excitement at all the possibilities.

Throughout sophomore year I continued to grow as a writer, but I kept skipping over the crucial architecture step. I was so attached to what I wrote that I never wanted to leave as much as a word behind. Every word written was a major victory after an uphill battle. When junior year came around, writing took a back burner. I became detached to the idea of writing. I didn’t even attempt to better my writing process. I hardly put effort into my personal pieces. I was just so uninspired. I was too overwhelmed with the quick pace of a busy life to be inspired. I took challenging classes. I was captain of the soccer team. I was head tutor of the writing center. I got tutored twice a week. I got my first and second jobs. I took five AP Exams. I babysat about once a week. I was so busy with other things that it seemed that I lost my voice. But although I had to force myself to write each word, I included some touch of Sue in every piece.

While my enjoyment of personal writing drifted further and further away, academic writing became less of an obstacle. Most of the writing we had to do was forming opinions about social issues. Even though the social issues we had to discuss were of little to no importance, like weather or not the US should continue to make and use the penny, the essays were easier to write. Where I had struggled so hard my freshman year, I was excelling now as a junior. I did have opinions! And it was, in fact, easier for me to voice my opinions through my pencil than through my tongue.

By the end of my junior year, I was writing better at the sentence level, but as a whole, my paper still lacked flow. I still was jumpy as a writer and I had too many ideas for my own good. I realized the more I put into my essay, the more I would get out. But I also realized that the more I take out of my essay the more focused it would be. So I started cutting out words, lots of words. And my essays weren’t the only thing that got focused. I realized that I would have to care more about my writing if I wanted it to meet my own expectations. I also realized that I would need to spend a lot more time writing to get better at it. Of course the epiphany came at the end of the fourth quarter. I was also still not going through the necessary steps to turn a draft into a final product. It seemed like editing was the only way I revised my work, if I even bothered with that. I never went back and revised what I had written. I never checked for ideas that didn’t fit or ones that needed more developing. Repetitiveness and lost ideas were constant themes in my writing.

But each paper was my style, my tone, and my slightly mundane diction. I was developing my own recognizable work. This year, I hope to go through the steps of revising for each piece I write. I want to get attached to my work as a whole, but not each word or each sentence. That way, I can focus on the main idea, which will help me establish flow. Finally, I will continue to develop my own style of writing and show small pieces of who I am though everything that I write.

"The Sounds of Silence" by Lola Lane

                                                                       

When I was a freshman, I was terrified of writing. But not just writing; I was afraid of writing wrong. When I was a sophomore in the writing center, it was a little too easy to hold back on what I really wanted to say. I wasn’t censoring myself, but I thought that what I had to say was not important, or, more importantly, not worth any one’s time. As I enter my third year in the writing center, I can tell that I am different. I realized that you don’t have to be the most interesting man in the world to say something. Every voice recorded in a written piece is a step towards a new idea or discovery. Anything shared with another can cause a collaboration, or plant the seed that blossoms into something no one even thought could happen. As I enter my senior year, it is plain to see that writing is a medium that is powerful in an overlooked way. When Carlos Fuentes stated, “Writing is a struggle against silence,” I like to think that he came to the nirvana of writing that I just have slowly began to grasp.

My first year as a writing center tutor scared me to an extreme degree. I was awkward, well more awkward than now, a little over-eager, but mostly scared. I was scared to say the wrong thing, write something dumb, or truly expose myself to my classmates. I worked my way through every writing assignment like a zombie walking mindlessly to his prey. I added just the right amount of cutesy, age-appropriate ideas, and never found myself straying from the image that I pre-fabricated for the eyes of the public. The central issue was that I didn’t believe in what I was saying, and I couldn’t fight the silence that was stacking up in my soul, acting as a blockade against what I wanted to put on the paper. No one was going to call me of this reverie. The only person who could save me was my self, and I was too tightly cocooned in silence to emerge with my identity.

It wasn’t until my junior year, and my second year in the writing center, that I began to see that everyone has something to say, and maybe what I had to say was worth listening to. I began to find my niche in the writing center, something that I had been too scared and inexperienced to do before. I became present which made the tutoring easier, and I stopped rushing through any possible action, or opportunity for dissatisfaction for the tutee. The fight I put up against the silence was a mere soldier, but, nonetheless, it was a start. Writing didn’t get easier. In fact, the difficulty of it resulted in many pages of estranged doodles and unfinished stories. When I thought I was trying to please someone else, I would stop writing. I wanted my work to be raw. I wanted it to be a mirror of me; a voice that was inaudible to any ear but visible to every eye. Slowly, I learned when to take my time, and when to push myself to break the fixture of silence that flowed openly in my mind.

Maybe it’s because I am a senior and I am becoming more sappy and sentimental as the countdown to graduation nears, but writing has come to mean so much more to me than I ever could have imagined when I walked into my freshman English class. In a way, writing is life. And not just because it is a strong media for news, or that it gives English teachers satisfaction to be able to teach what they love. Writing enables me to have a voice. I may not be physically shouting from the rooftops, or changing the world by taking actions right this moment, but, in a way, I think writing lets me be me, and that’s life-changing. The silence I once embraced is the very parameters that I struggle to break free from now. Although I look back at my sophomore self, a scared weakling in the writing center, I understand I have only just started on this confusing maze of finding my style, voice, and personality. For all I know, my future self is re-reading this essay right now, and is laughing about how naïve I was, and how I really had no idea how to write. What my future self thinks does not concern me at present. The only spark of inspiration right now is the fact that I have begun to put up a fight against the shroud of silence that in the past has put a damper on my ideas. I may not have yet been successful in translating the noise that reverberates in my mind on to paper, but I’m trying to be true to myself, which is really all I can hope for. And that’s just fine with me.

"A Work in Progress" by Hiram McDaniels

“No book can ever be finished. While working on it we learn just

enough to find it immature the moment we turn away from it.”

― Karl Popper

I have a history of being a particularly mobile writer. In my earliest days as a self-proclaimed “novelist to-be,” I remember lying in the bathtub, holding a notepad over the water and scratching away at my latest idea; I remember writing at the kitchen table, shuffling my journal away when it was time for dinner; writing in bed after everyone else had gone to sleep, writing sprawled on the floor, writing on the bumpy bus ride to school, writing in the margins of my homework, writing on my arms when I had no other option and a writing mood struck. I never figured out how to write in the shower, but I was well on my way to a solution when I made the transition to the more stationary process of typing out my plans instead of scrawling them on every available surface. Despite this change, one thing that has remained constant is that I never

"Bacon and Writing" by Victoria Lemmings

“i never think at all when i write

nobody can do two things at the same time

and do them both well”

-Don Marquis, Archy’s Life of Mehitabel, 1993

            Before taking Advanced Composition in my sophomore year I primarily looked at writing through an academic lens. I was very focused on organization, paragraphing, analysis, and all the other necessary elements of formal writing. The extent of my creative writing was slim to nonexistent. If I ever did creative writing, it was always for a school assignment that I considered dumb at the time. Writing was fun for me because I succeeded at it, but I never wrote out of class sorely for my own pleasure. When I started Advanced Comp and I saw all the non-academic pieces we would have to compose, I remember groaning inside. I hardly considered myself creative, so the task of having to create four personal pieces a quarter plus short fiction, poems, and newspaper articles seemed daunting and chore-like. Back then, my writing process was formulaic, precise, and quite frankly boring. I would always have trouble writing enough because I would overthink what I wanted to say before I had even written it out. The sentences I wrote were always perfected before they even arrived on my paper. I overthought about nearly everything I wrote. I would still edit a lot out at the end, but that was more taking out ideas and chunks than actually changing the structure and bones of my writing.

            However, the more and more we wrote creatively in Advanced Comp, the more fun I had and the less structured I was while writing. Slowly, I gained confidence creatively as I realized that writing personal pieces was like telling a story in my head and just writing it down on paper play by play. As Marquis said, “i never think at all when i write/ nobody can do two things at the same time/ and do them both well.” I really began to relate to this quote after we wrote our first personal pieces, in particular my piece using imagery to describe my favorite place, the pool. In class we had talked about the madman, the architect, the carpenter, and judge. I unleashed my inner madman for the first time during my pool piece. I didn’t think when I wrote, I just poured everything out. Like never before, I had no filter with what I wrote. I felt the pool; I was basking in the sun and I was feeling the cold rush of the water on my burnt skin. My words just came onto my page like word vomit. I felt like a sink faucet that couldn’t be turned off, my ideas spitting out like flowing water. Now I find that my best ideas are the ones my brain just dumps out without my thinking, like Marquis says. If I tried to slow myself down and compose these craftily beautiful sentences, my ideas wouldn’t be as

"Pen, not Pencil" by James Archer

For as long as I could remember, a pencil was my trusty weapon while conquering the great plains of lined paper and the valleys of words. It was a default option. I never really questioned it. Then, like a mighty sandcastle overthrown by the rioting sea wielding swords, I rewrote the government of my perspective. I edited out my notion of the pencil, replacing it with the might of the pen. Instead of writing out words in a pasty gray color, I now adorned the shades of the rainbow ready to convey my thoughts.

"Writers Block" by August Rain

If I could describe what Writer’s Block was, I probably wouldn’t be stuck.

I wouldn’t feel like someone had just stepped on the back of my shoe.

I would be able to paint you pictures of seas and castles and fires and faraway beauties,

Not a blank wall.

Writer’s block makes me feel as though my backpack was caught in the door way, as I was rushing for my next class.

Writer’s block is the dragon that guards what I most desire.

Writer’s block is that monster in my closet that keeps me up at night.

Writer’s block is my worst enemy.

Writer’s block is trying to stand in the ocean and being knocked back down by the icy waves.

Writer’s block is a backed up pipe.

Writer’s block is running after the impossible.

Writer’s bock is…

This,

Right now,

When I cannot put my thoughts down coherently.

It’s when the headache starts.

It’s me, with my head in hands.

I am a writer,

And I am stuck. 

"Not Another Essay!" by Tom Bombadil

The teacher hands me the paper.  Oh no, not another essay I whisper under my breath.  The thought of typing and researching and commentary makes my head spin as I struggle to imagine the next two weeks.  Slowly I lower my eyes and read the prompt.  Okay, I can write this.  The topic is not that hard.  Actually, it is quite easy.  Yes, I can do this.  When I finally convince myself the essay is not as hard as I thought I move on and start planning. 

However, my planning is not outlining my essay and thinking through my plan.  The process is much more basic.

When I come home after school I put the essay to the side and do all my easier homework.   Finally, I finish my math and the horrible physics problem set.  I turn toward the prompt paper and stare at the white sheet for a moment.  Sheer terror occurs again as I cannot remember the confidence I had built up in class.  Ah, I put the thoughts in the far back of my mind, but as I drag them forward, the butterflies dissipate and I am ready to write.  I do not plan my essays, but as Colette from Casual Chance said, I “Sit down, and put down everything that comes into your heard and then you’re a writer.  But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.”  I start writing anything that comes into my head that seems to follow the prompt.  I stop writing as I remember I have to write a thesis.  Before I write the most important sentence of my paper, I look through my book which the prompt is based on and find my evidence.  One quote is found, and another and another.  I have three quotes and can base my thesis on that evidence.  There, a thesis written.  I move on and continue typing word after word on my computer. 

The keys clicking keeps me awake and the thought of finishing strengthens my resolve.  I put every thought that appears in my head on that paper because I need to fill up the required three to five page limit.  I know I can always delete and change my essay.  Suddenly, I stop in the middle of writing.  I have lost all thought and am completely blank.  I know I must put down everything in my head; I reread my paper and as I read, a new sentence forms in my head.  The rest of the essay flows smoothly.  I write assertion, evidence and commentary. The commentary is the hardest I discover because I must relate my analysis back to my evidence and thesis.  I persevere and as I finish the paper, a small smile finds a way on my mouth.  I am pleased I am finished.  

I know the hardest part has yet to occur.  I press save and then print.  The paper gets stuck in the printer.  After I struggle with my printer—why can they never work!—I look at what I printed.  Grabbing a red pen, I sit down at my desk and start reading.  Though I know I should read out loud, I forget and miss many mistakes. I judge my work, like Colette says, I “without pity, destroy most of it.” I look down and my essay is covered in red pen.  Well, time to fix my paper.  Walking back to my computer, I fish for the prompt which has seemed to have mixed in with the abundance of papers on the floor.  After finding the piece I need, I fix the essay on my computer.  I know my first edit was only grammar editing.  The next destruction of my paper is the hardest because the prompt and the commentary have to match the instructions and my thesis.  Glancing at my thesis I check that the sentence answers the question given by the teacher.  A success in my books is reprinting my paper without any annoying printer errors.  My red pen flies across the page less than before as I reread over the assignment. 

I let the paper sit on my desk.  I do not look at the prompt nor my typed words.  Allowing for that wait period keeps me sane because I am not obsessing over proper English, following the prompt, or perfect grammar.  I can relax and let the assignment hang in the back of my head.  Finally, I read over the essay again.  This time, I feel like an author; however, I know my work is not down.  Colette would be disappointed if I stopped before I finished.  After I print a new copy, I sit down with my pen and I look for spelling, misplaced modifiers, dangling sentence, and anything my English teacher would not approve of in a paper. 

Suddenly, I see a whole section of commentary that make no sense.  I sprint to my computer and delete, delete, delete.  I sit thinking for a while before inspiration strikes like lightening in my mind.  As I type the smile returns.  This is the way the evidence fits the thesis.  I reprint and reread one more time. The essay looks good, but I ask my mother to read through, just in case I missed something, before I turn the paper into my teacher.  She reads and I follow her suggestions. 

This has not taken me one day, but many days, broken up by school and periods of no inspiration.  When the assignment is due; however, I am finished and turn in the paper with a smile.  No matter my grade, I am happy with the result. 

I am not only a writer, but have evolved into an author.  I see my mistakes and fix them.  My work is not perfect even if I receive an A on the essay.  I know I can always improve.  However, I most always remember, the only way to improve is to look at my work without pity and destroy most of the paper. 

The next day, I receive a prompt for a new book.  This time, I am ready.   

"My Right Way to Write" by July K. Sapphire

“Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.” – E.L. Doctorow. 

Everybody has a different writing process. My writing process is hazarding myself. To me, writing is amazingly beautiful, enchanting, expressive, and absolutely terrifying. It is the beginning of the writing process that scares me. It is starting, and knowing how to start. It would be unacceptable for me to just sit down and write, with no regards to the consequences. I also begin to fear the end. I am utterly terrified that what I write will not satisfy me, that it will not be good enough. Every piece of my writing is a reflection of myself, and so I must work to make it as perfect as I can. I must make it something that I can be satisfied with, something that I can think about its existence in the world without cringing.

Finally, after trying to calm down and probably procrastinating a bit more that I should, I put my illogical fears aside, and begin. I look over the assignment, and I make a mental map of what I want it to look like. Depending on the type of writing, I may jot down a few lines or phrases that I think I might want to include later. Then, I sit in silence alone and think. I like silence. I like being alone. I like to think. I usually sit in my favorite comfortable purple chair, my black desk, or just on a couch, depending on what kind of writing I am doing. I prefer this stage to be done in one sitting, if possible. I let the words come together to me as constellations appear in the night sky. And all of a sudden, in a rush of passion, I write. I write, before I can change my mind, as much as I can about what I have planned. I then throw caution to the wind, and start to write things before I can think about them. I am not afraid anymore, because now I am in control. Writing now feels wonderful, like driving a car really, really fast. Even though my entire composition of myself is at stake, I do not want to ever stop. But as I must, I do.

Then I look at the Thing that I have created. It is staring me right back in the face, and daring me to make it better. By this time I am too far gone. There is no return. So I do it. I make it better. Now, I consciously think about what I am doing. I do not make any major changes to the paper; however, as I revise, I pay more attention to things like structure, word choice, and clarifying. Without any fear, I take those words and I shove them around and I hack them apart and I glue things onto the end. And then I smooth it all out and somehow seamlessly sew it all together.

In the end, when it is all there, I start to like it. At this point, however, it is still too personal to let anybody else see it. After all, I do share a secret with it. I smile to see that it is just sitting there, looking harmless, as if it had always been there. As if it is only itself. But it is not just itself. In a way, it is just my own thoughts in a physical form. It is me. Only I know the truth. I am the only one who knows how I created it. No one else can come in between that. And with that in mind, I somehow prepare myself for the inevitable: that I actually have to turn in the writing assignment. I actually care about what I have written, and I don’t want it to get hurt. What if someone says it is not good enough? What if someone tries to kill it? And mostly, what if my baby bird does not fly at all? But I know, deep down, that no one else can harm it. I created it, and only I have the power to bring it down. By letting it be seen by someone else, I am not risking its death, but I am giving it a chance at life.  I love it, and so I set it free. At the end, after it has been sanded down and polished, it is something I am proud of. I have actually created this, out of words. Out of the same words available to everybody, I have created something that is uniquely me. When I complete something, it is the most amazing feeling. All those hours of terror, and then of inspiration, passion, and work were all worth it. I took a chance and I wrote, and I loved it.

"Unveiling the Words" by Raul

"The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.” -Vladimir Nabakov

                                                                                                                                                           

            Although I have always loved to write, it takes a long time and a lot of frustration for me to write what I mean to say. I have always found it difficult to get what’s in my head onto paper. I always wish that I could just write down my thoughts without thinking, but I am unable to do that because I am always worried about making my sentences perfect. I usually sit with my laptop or papers, ready to write my essay, but for some reason I can never get my words out. To get to the point of where my words come out into my writing freely, I go through a whole process of brainstorming and outlining. I then continue using my usual process of how I write an essay.  

            I begin my essay by planning out what I want to say in it. In order for me to gather all my ideas and organize them in a way that makes my essay flow, I create a list of what I want to say in each paragraph. I only write a short sentence for each bullet point, and then I move them around in an order that makes sense. Some people write detailed outlines with all of their commentary in it, but I like to keep it short and then expand on what I have. This way, I know what I want to say in each paragraph and then the words come out of my mind easily. If I tried any other way then I would be sitting in front of the computer deciding how to word each sentence, which would take me a very long time.

            After I have a list of what I want to include in my paper, I begin with my introduction. Some people write their introduction after they have completed their body paragraphs, but I find it easier to just have the introduction written so that I can write my essay as I go. For me, the introduction of an essay is the most difficult paragraph to write and it takes the longest time. Even though I always have my paragraphs planned out before I start writing my introduction, I never know what I want to say in it. I sit there for a long time in front of my computer, hoping that I will get an idea of what to say to start off my essay. I become very aggravated when I can’t think of what to say.

            When writing an essay, I tend to get distracted quite a bit. This is the biggest challenge for me during my writing process. Distractions add to the reasons why it takes me so long to begin writing words out. If my mind strays for just a moment, I find myself unintentionally picking up my cell phone. Once I get distracted, I am likely to stay on twitter or continue texting for hours. I always hear people say that music really helps them stay in focus, but for me it does the opposite. Even if the music is on low volume and is really relaxing and calm, I lose focus. Any little sound can distract me. For example, if my brother is jumping around in the room next to mine, I try to ignore it and continue writing, but I usually end up going over to him and yelling at him to stop. I need to be in complete concentration if I am to ever get any good sentences onto paper.

            Although I get distracted a lot while writing, once I do start to write and I know what I want to say, the words flow out of my mind and I start typing away. To me, the best feeling is not when I have completed an essay, but when I have a steady pace of writing down my ideas. Once I really get into my writing, I just keep writing whatever comes into my mind. Then, when my essay is finally done, I go back and edit it. I sometimes have to change whole paragraphs or even take out sentences here and there, but compared to writing the essay, the revising doesn’t take me too long.

            Once I have finished writing and revising my work, I think back to when I had just started to write that essay. It really amazes me that, although I didn’t know how to say what I wanted at first, I eventually got everything out of my mind and into my essay. It really is like the words are all there, just waiting for me to figure out how to make them visible.