In my opinion, writing is very subjective because it all depends on the writer and reader’s interpretation. Therefore, when Joan Didion said, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear,” I completely related to it because whenever I’m writing anything, I always somehow connect it with personal experiences or thoughts. Even though, my writing is straightforward and simple, I like it how I connect to each of my pieces because one can tell it is my work. Often times, when I’m reading my writing out loud it feels like I’m talking and telling someone a story. I see this as a good and bad quality because from many people I have heard that they can hear my voice in my writing, which makes it good because they can differentiate my writing from someone else’s. The bad thing about it would be that there isn’t much formality in my writing, which does bother me because sometimes it doesn’t sound as sophisticated. I would like to change or combine those two factors in some way, so it doesn’t seem like I’m having a conversation with someone, but also the reader can tell who has written it. In Bridge paper 3, I tried doing that when describing how I would change the museum display and I realized that I use conversation words in my writing. So, when I was writing my paper, I started looking up synonyms for the commonly used words and I noticed a huge difference.
My writing process is very similar to Didion’s because I tend to create a visual image or an outline in my mind to help me organize and layout my thoughts for each paragraph. Writing has never been my strength, so putting my thoughts into actual words and sentences has been very difficult for me and because of that I, sometimes change the understanding of my thoughts. Also, I have always wanted to add figurative language in my writing, but I have not really been successful with it because either it doesn’t make any sense or it comes out to be the complete opposite of what I want it to say. Before I start writing, I try to gather as much information as I can, related to the topic. The research really helps me grasp a different perspective on the topic. However, sometimes I gather too much information in which I get confused because I don’t know what to put in my piece and what not to. Often times when I have too information, I tend to put all of the information into couple of sentences, which creates run-off or choppy sentences. Although, this semester I think I have definitely improved upon that because my writing has become more clear and precise. I’m starting to learn where the actual information is required and where it is important to keep the sentences short and simple.
Through this semester, I have also learned that specific details are the most important part of writing. No matter how minute the details are, they will never hurt the sentence if you add them in. After reading a couple of people’s paper over the course of the semester, I have realized that they are so many unanswered questions in people’s writing piece because of the little details they missed out. Therefore, I noticed that too in my writing and the most important question I would forget or not thoroughly answer is the “why.” Analyzing the information is very hard because it involves the critical thinking and when I do that part I don’t know if I have answered the “why” and given enough information to support it. In conclusion, my writing process is changing as I grow and gather more information from people, but there are still some mistakes that I continue to make no matter how many times someone’s pointed it out.
