MID-TERM

MIDTERM
Tobias Wolff’s description of the writing process accurately portrays how one should attempt to go about writing. He stresses the importance of letting yourself just write the paper. He advises to just “get it out” in a way that is satisfactory to the writer and that in doing so, the story/ paper will in a sense seem to write itself. By writing confidently and fluently, the paper will end up having the writer’s own unique voice behind it as opposed to if one were to write by constantly switching words and editing sentences to try to ‘perfect’ things as they go which would result in an end product that might sound too loquacious and lack the writer’s own unique voice. He also mentions that writing a paper/story fluently will make the whole process more enjoyable for instead of battling your way through each word, sentence, and paragraph you get a chance to just write it all out, telling a story from beginning to end with no speed bumps in between. And after all the fun of writing is over, Wolff says then the writer must change gears, rereading and editing the essay with a keen eye, editing the paper as if it were someone else’s.

Through my writing experiences thus far, I have come to realize that I fully agree with Wolff’s view on writing. I used to try to write basically in the way he warns not to; I tried to write a story or essay word by word, sentence by sentence, attempting to perfect the paper as I wrote it. Doing this, I always found the final product to be too wordy and awkward. It always lacked flow and didn’t sound the way I had imagined it would as I was writing. In Wolff’s words, I was a “constipated” writer. Only recently have I tried to, as he would say, “get it out” when I write. Instead of piecing together my paper I just write it all out in my own words. Doing this helps me to not overcomplicate my sentences with big words I wouldn’t normally use and helps the overall flow. For example, on our most recent essay I started out writing like a ‘constipated’ writer. I was trudging along through the paper and after a couple paragraphs I read over it, and the product sounded nothing like I had intended. It sounded very verbose and lacked a nice flow. This made me feel somewhat stuck and turned me off of writing the paper, so I set it all aside for a couple days. When I eventually came back to the paper, I said to hell with the old draft and started to rewrite it from scratch, this time writing it all out and putting it down how it sounded in my head. Although the finished product was not perfect, the paper was overall much better and sounded more like me. Though I did not yet read his description or even know who Tobias Wolff was, I had applied his ideas on the writing process and had success doing so.

I even find myself agreeing with Wolff on the fact that writing this way actually does bring a little bit of pleasure into the whole writing process. Personally I am not the biggest fan of writing and have never thoroughly enjoyed it. However, when I find myself telling a story or writing about something that interests me in a paper, through applying Wolff’s suggestion of writing it all out and letting the story unfold in my own words, I find I actually enjoy myself a little bit. By writing out the story on paper the way I hear it in my mind, the way I would tell it to my neighbor, it is a much more pleasant process than the boring and meticulous way of trying to perfect everything as you write. I find the last part of Wolff’s description of the writing process to be obviously applicable to every writer. No one writes a perfect essay on the first draft. Carefully reading over and editing one’s essay is a crucial part of the writing process. I must admit that often times find myself guilty of slacking in this area. I would not go as far as to say that this point from Wolff does not match my experience in writing, but I will admit that I could definitely benefit from a more keen and strict editing job on my own papers.