If I am stretching it, what can I do to persuade the reader that this stretch is worth making?
I've usually played it on the safe side by utilizing extremely basic and reasonable evidence to reinforce my arguments, but I think it would be fun to stretch some evidence for an argument. It may seem bizarre, but I think this is where a lot of new thought connections come from, even if they don't make total sense.
Just as the introduction sought to place the paper in the larger, ongoing conversation about the topic, so should the conclusion insist on returning the reader to that ongoing conversation, but with the feeling that they have learned something more
This is really helpful to me because I've never really known how to write a conclusion. Many of my essays fail because my conclusion was not done well. I've always thought that a conclusion was a restatement of the introduction and that it should make the reader question or enforce their opinion on the topic of my writing, but I never thought that it should be done with the consideration of the fact that they gained new knowledge from the essay the just read.
Have I made room in my outline for other points of view about my topic?
I feel like I struggle with this question a lot when planning and writing. Usually I focus too much on my own stance and I forget that we have to include the opposite stance and validify their reasoning as well. For the upcoming essay, I will definitely be researching the other side of my argument more so that I can sufficiently provide a different point of view on the topic. However, of course, in order to enforce my stance even with this opposite opinion, I need to be able to counter the opposite opinion.
Always be read)' to expect more from the writer.
I likey this mindset.
you're responding to the writer.
I find it very considerate and open-minded of this article to make proofreading and responding to others' writing as more of a friendly hand to take rather than a strictly student-teacher relationship. I find that encouraging to explore my own writing styles rather than adjusting my writing to the proofreader's/responder's tastes.
First, don't set out to seek and destroy all errors and problems in the writing. You're not an editor.
WHY IS THIS ME THOUGH HAHAHA Whenever I try to help people look over their essays I always try to pinpoint all the errors and at the end their paper is full of red marks... I do it to try to be helpful because I want them to do well but sometimes I think I'm too critical LOL
Try to imitate the teacher. Mark what he'd mark and sound like he'd sound.
This has definitely been my mindset for the past few years I've been writing essays. It's very stripping of my own thoughts. Everything is too restrictive, but because the instructor is the one grading it and all we want is a good grade, we have to play to their preferences.
composing is a highly complex problem-solving process
Never thought about it like that. I've always felt that composing is just creating something from nothing or close to nothing, not a problem to solve.
the five students who experienced blocking were all operating either with writing rules or with planning strategies that impeded rather than enhanced the com- posing process. The five students who were not hampered by writer's block also utilized rules, but they were less rigid ones, and thus more appropriate to a complex process like writing. Also, the plans these non-blockers brought to the writing process were more functional, more flexible, more open to information from the outside.
This just reminded me of my AP Lang class I took junior year of high school. To simplify the structure and process of writing rhetorical analyses, my teacher gave us an almost equation-like structure for writing them. I found it so difficult to write in her style because the way she wanted us to organize our sentences didn't correlate with how I preferred to. That was probably the reason why I tanked my rhetorical analyses in class. lol.
a grow- ing distrust of their abilities and an aversion toward the composing process itself.
I think I have experienced this. The first time I wrote a persuasive essay in sixth grade and I asked my dad to look over it, he would comment on an endless amount of mistakes my first draft had, and it made it even more frustrating when I had spent hours just trying to think of a hook, and I still hadn't managed to think of a good one. Since then, through trial and error, I've finally been able to write somewhat decent essays, but I have never believed in myself to write a flawless essay because in my mind, I am always telling myself that I've never been able to write a good essay, so I shouldn't expect my essays to be amazing anyways.
Ruth will labor over the first paragraph of an essay for hours.
I find this part quite similar to a scenario that Lamott from "Shitty First Drafts" utilized to explain the pain of starting a first draft, or a first anything. In this case, Ruth is dealing with a first paragraph.
There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you're supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go -- but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages.
yes! this is always me when i'm writing. 90% of the words i write are stiff and structured so that they either fulfill a rubric's requirements or are tailored to my teacher's/ta's/professor's preferences. but it's that 10% that allows me to elatedly compromise my own writing style with the reader's/grader's style. that 10% includes the sentences and phrases that i am most satisfied with.
healthy.
so...i wonder how many sh*tty first drafts lamott wrote for this selection.
Very few writers really know what they are doing until they've done it.
i feel like every creative activity follows this concept. sometimes you might have a very rough imagination of what you want the outcome to be, but other times, you don't even know how to begin. i've been experimenting with choreography in figure skating for the past year before the beginning of quarantine, and i remember that for some parts of the music i was choreographing for, i had a perfect idea of a move or movement i wanted to add, but other spots, especially the beginning and ending pose, i really had to wrack my brain because of the infinite possibilities.