I have sometimes thought of the similarities between writing and black smithing, the art of using metal to craft numerous things. The smith always starts with just rough blocks or chunks of metal that is then heated until it becomes a molten, sludgy liquid. That molten liquid is then poured into the proper mold to make a rough image of whatever it is supposed to be. When that something happens to be a sword, there is a lot more that has to happen for that sword to really be able to serve its purpose. The smith waits for it to cool then breaks it out of the mold, slamming it on the anvil to get the excess chunks off of the sides. The roughshod sword is then reheated until it is glowing almost white and is placed on the anvil for the smith to hammer a sharp edge on it. This process is repeated until the smith believes that the job is well done, and then takes the sword to the grindstone where the blade is sharpened further and then polished. A few finishing touches, either on the hilt or scabbard, and the sword is ready to be presented to customers.

The same is true for the process of writing; you take a rough idea or prompt, and you begin to write by just pouring your thoughts into a rough draft. You then take that rough draft and beat it a few times to get the major errors or hammer the really unusable parts out and begin your second draft. You can repeat that process as many times as you need or are allowed, and then take your almost finished product to the grindstone. Check for the smallest of errors whether grammar, punctuation, or minor misspellings and just refine to the smallest detail. For your finishing touches you have either an interesting title or introduction that draws people to want to look.

Writing in and of itself is a compounding skill as there is always room for improvement, even if your writing is amazing there is always some way that it can be enhanced. Not to mention the many different genres that you can branch your writing towards, just as there are many different things you can craft using an anvil and forge other than just a sword or weapons. This also means that when it comes to writing academic papers, there are many different ways that the finished product will come out. No two swords are the same, even if the same smith crafted them in the same way. The natural imperfections in the metals and the swing of the hammer creates enough change that they could not be considered the same.

Taking a backwards look at how my writing has improved is somewhat of a shock as to how much I have improved since before the class. As someone with very little experience in writing, just being able to write these essays at all is impressive to me and being able to see the progress in the process is extremely gratifying. I have gone from having no idea what I am doing to being able to write fully fledged, college level academic essays. When I wrote the first essay “The Toll Gate of Writer’s Block”,  I struggled to get past the first few sentences for a while, as I was not sure what or how I wanted to write. I had no outline, no plan, and a lot of ideas that would not go together. I managed to get enough down for the first rough draft, and after another class where we talked more on the essays and did peer reviews, I felt that I had at least enough to confidently be able to finish the essay.

For the second essay “That Which We Call A Rose By Any Other Name Would Smell Just As Sweet” I did not write an outline, but more of a list of things I wanted to cover in the essay and in their approximate order. I find actual outlines a little difficult to follow as I will either hyper focus on following the outline exactly even if I am not entirely sure what to write, causing writer’s block. Or I will have little tendrils of ideas that I end up following to where the outline is rendered useless. And so I opt to instead just list my ideas down and either add or subtract any ideas as they may or may not fit into what I am trying to write. This also helps me to reduce problems caused by writer’s block, by giving me something to try and write about without trying to force me to write exactly what is there. However, when it came time to write the third essay “Paleological Pixelation” I struggled with outside or environmental factors that affected my writing, the factors that you can not control. These could be equated to there being too many imperfections in the metal which causes it to be unusable, forcing the black smith to get a different piece of metal. It means starting over, but the quality will be better which makes it somewhat worth it.

Going forward on my path as a writer, the experience that these past essays have given me will help me in the future with any essays, stories, or other writings that I may have to write either in future classes or even my career. Even though I am hoping to have a career in Computer Science, being able to write essays well could help if I ever have to write a lab report or something similar. I have gone from dreading writing something that I have no clue how, to looking forward to smithing the next one. After all, time and experience are the best teachers for smiths to craft things beautifully, and not just well.

Works Cited

Wright, Victoria. “The Toll Gate of Writer’s Block” 7 July. 2021. ERH 101, Virginia Military Institute, student paper.

Wright, Victoria. “That Which We Call a Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell Just as Sweet” 13 July. 2021. ERH 101, Virginia Military Institute, student paper.

Wright, Victoria. “Paleological Pixelation” 22 July. 2021. ERH 101, Virginia Military Institute, student paper.

Reflection:

This essay was fairly simple to write, it was a simple rhetorical analysis of our previous works, and how we are going to use our improvement in the future. So I naturally wanted to bring in a subject that I am familiar with that would make a good analogy, and had this really interesting thought. Writing essays, or really just in general, is similar to black smithing. And once I had that thought, I had an essay that I believed would keep a reader interested. After all it’s not everyday that someone says that writing is like black smithing, the art of metal working on an anvil and forge. Once I had written a good portion of the first draft down, after a bit of a rocky start trying to find a good introduction, I was actually really proud of what I had thought of and written.