My essay “Embracing the Suck” was principally about the idea of putting up with
whatever painful circumstances that may disrupt a writer or sap his will to write. In my
personal experiences I had, in the past, not written very well due to a lack of motivation
on the basis that most of what I was told to read had put me off of anything remotely
related to English and writing classes. I had the raw talent to write well, and I was
generally good at reading, but without any reason to use this, I only put out terrible
papers which were meant only to satisfy basic requirements. It wasn’t until my life’s
goals became known that I realized that, if I want anything out of life I had better see to
it that I write and communicate well with everyone, particularly the teachers, who will
ultimately determine whether or not I will succeed (they write the grades in the grade
book). This lesson applies universally to people however because not only do grade
school and college students need to impress their teachers and professors, adults in the
workplace must also communicate effectively with their colleagues, bosses, and
customers so that they may succeed in the free market or elsewhere in life.

Over the course of the three drafts, I had learned to shape figurative language
into something coherent and digestible. While vivid figurative language is great for
getting the reader’s attention, it is not so great for having them understand what it is one
is actually trying to say. I learned to tone down the figurative language in favor of better
organizing my thoughts and making the words on the pages meld together better so that
I could provide a vivid description of an important point or example. I also learned to
think more about rereading
my own work to know what it is that I have done poorly so
that I may revise it into something that at very least works. What is of particular note is
the change from my first draft to my final. The first draft was basically a freewriting
session composed of lots of figurative language smashed into one colossal paragraph
(which left my peers somewhat confused). By the time my third draft came around, I had
toned down this figurative language in some places and attempted to enhance it in
others so that the paper remains rhetorically strong while at the same time delivering
exactly the message it was designed to.
I however am far from perfect and some things still need to be worked on. For
instance, my word choices in some places were too redundant which in some ways
dulled the figurative language (and which interfered with the flow of the paper). For
instance, one line looks something like this “ The most that I could do was point out the
insane stupidity of literally everyone involved in the story.”. “Insane stupidity fails to fully
capture the idea that I was trying to get across and, as a result, fails to add to the paper. There
were a few other spots such as

“Following the plot was simple to follow only because it couldn’t possibly have been
overly written or ruined by how abominable all of the characters were.”

Such redundancy damaged the paper and needs to be better removed in future papers.

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