Forgetting to Eat My Own Words

Throughout high school, I was led to believe that there were only two types of writing, literary analysis and free writing. Two polar opposites. In literary analysis there is a correct answer and the points made in the paper are to support a text. In free writing there is not answer, the only support is what comes from the mind of the writer. In high school, I struggled greatly when it came to using text to validate my paper and I could never pick a topic that was in sync with my knowledge of the book. The one and only free writing class I took was the exact opposite. There was a topic, but no restrictions. No text to relate to. No rules to follow. Everything was decided by me. The papers felt like my papers and whenever I free write that is how I feel. When there are restrictions, I feel as if I am writing for a grade, for my teacher, for no real reason. There is no meaning in my words. No flow in my sentences. No connection in my paragraphs. Structure turns me into a literary robot, just jotting down words, hoping to get a good grade. However, in English 101, I found myself in the middle of these two ways of writing. Doing fantastic on my first paper only to drop off on my second. The first paper was free where the others were more structured, at least I thought so. The second, third, and forth paper all had a specific topic, but there was freedom within the topic. On the second and parts of the third paper, I felt overwhelmed and did not make it free, meaning I did not think that it was my own paper. But what the class has taught me is how to be free with structure and how to be free with text.
The paper I wrote about the Discourse community was terrible, and I knew it from the beginning, however it was the first paper that I had written that I had to be free while sticking to a specific outline. Every paragraph was choppy, and it did not connect to the topic as much as it should of. I was too wrapped up in trying to describe who the OGA was and did not connect it back to the topic of a Discourse community (Chase). When writing it, I never felt like I was writing, it was long process of spewing out facts, trying to connect them to a topic. My third paper on cell phones relating to brain cancer felt a lot better, even though my grade did not reflect that, it is how I felt. I again felt like I structured it a little too much, but I felt like it was more my paper (Chase). I was energized while writing it, but looking back I realized that I was again spewing out facts and was not really writing. Obviously the facts were needed but there was not much flow or voice in my writing, it was still far too structured. My final paper, was my paper. I felt it before, during, and after I wrote it. The tone was present and the voice was there (Chase). I created my own unique structure and I believe that it turned out well. From my own paper, there is no structure. There is only a suggested guideline for the writer to dive into to make their own piece of art.
To me, free writing and text have never gone together. They are two completely different things. This class taught me differently. Honestly on the first paper, I unknowing figured out the connections and it benefited me greatly, but not so much on the second paper. The paper on the Discourse community I tried to guide my paper from the book, creating zero freedom in my writing (Chase). To say the least the whole process was frustrating because I was not able to pick a passage from the book that I would be able to write about. In my third paper, if I remember correctly, I completely forgot to cite the text until the last moment, so whatever was in there was simply not beneficial to the paper at all. At this point in the process I was still heading down hill, trying to understand this insane idea of being free while sticking to the text. The key that I discovered is that the book can support my writing. It can make my thoughts become clearer, allowing me to write more free. On my final paper, I quoted a phrase to describe intertextuality and it was like that phrase and my paper were meant for each other (Chase). It fit incredibly well. But again, there is no restrictions to my freedom in writing. They were ways that were unknown to me that know elevate my freedom in writing.
I’m not saying that the only downfall displayed in my writing was these two things, but I do believe that they caused everything else to dwindle. I was trying to grasp the ideas that I wrote above and forgot the basics that I had learned about fee writing in high school. Really, it is funny. In the first paper I write about what writing means to me. I wrote with passion, conviction, and everything came together. And almost in the blink of an eye, I had lost it. I was trying too hard to get a good grade and follow the structure that I had forgotten my own rules. There is no structure. The structure is created by the writer. There is no beginning middle and end. It is one piece of art ready to be displayed (Chase). On the fourth paper I felt like it was mine and I loved writing every second of it. But I was still taking breaks trying to figure out what to write and it took me a long time to get all of my words across the page. With this paper and the first paper it didn’t take more than an hour and thirty minutes to write. When it is my own paper, I know what to say before it comes to my head. It took me a semester and rereading my own words in my first paper to remember what Emily Strasser had said, “writing can and should be much more than sophisticated sentence structure” (206).

Work Sited

Chase, Mackie, other papers written during the semester. FL, 2015.

Strasser, Emily, comp. Writing about Writing. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, n.d. Print.