Is this interesting, meaningful, and/or reflective of my true self? Corny, I know, but these are some of the questions we should ask ourselves before beginning the daunting task of writing of our personal experiences. James Moffett, author of Confessions of An Ex-College Freshman, failed to even ponder one of these questions before working on his first english assignment about his home town. He made the mistake of writing about a place that meant nothing to him, and it reflected in his work. His entire paper was based on borrowed thoughts and ideas, and his professor saw right through it, yet was kind enough to let him redo the assignment. James approached his second version with only himself in mind. It was completely foreign concept to him because the first time around he wrote what he thought his professor wanted to hear, which is exactly what he was taught to do up till that point.
The school system teaches us how to be good writers, writers with minimal talent who borrow rather than steal. It chooses to educate us in the procedural aspects of writing, rather than how to look inward and steal from ourselves, the very aspect that forms great writers. So, on the second time around, James' goal was to reflect on the memories of his home town, and so he stole from himself his true, human, thoughts and emotions, something that was all his own. His paper was therefore original, and raw; it had a purpose, it meant something to him, and reflected his true self.
I believe great writing is based on how much of ourselves we pour into our writing, and thus how much we steal from ourselves. In order for us to do so, we must look inward and find what interests and reflects us, and run away with it. If we do not put ourselves into our writing than it is just an empty and borrowed piece of work, just like the first version of James' disappointing paper.
I do agree with this statement, however I want to add how cocky this guy was. He seemed like he was smarter than everybody, but he really wasn't. The processor, I think brought him back down to reality. I think this guy did learn a lesson of not writing for his audience but rather write for himself. I didn't like the fact that he kind of felt ungrateful for being at an Ivy League school, which I hate people who are like that. Anyways, I agree we should put more of ourselves into the writing rather than everyone else.
ReplyDeleteI agree with this post. I don't think people realize how easy it is to write a paper when you're doing it from the heart. If you write about something you love or something you have a passion for it'll definitively sound better than if you write a paper on a topic of no interest to you. The paper he wrote at first had none of his "true" feelings, just sounded like a tour guide.
ReplyDeleteThis post is so accurate. Since writing is a way of expressing ourselves pretending to represent something besides yourself comes off awkward and poorly executed. That's where the school system gets it all wrong. They teach us how to write a certain precise way with little room for personal input. So by the time one has to write on our own we lack the ability to think for ourselves and write uniquely. Our best personal creations are best when we put our soul into it.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with this blog. Looking back to my earlier years, my teachers would give the class mundane topics to write about and expect a creative well written essay back. To me, this isn't fair. I fully believe that in order to write well, one must put there their true feelings onto paper. The worst essays that I've written were the ones I tried to impress my teacher with, when I really should've been writing what my exact feelings were about the topic. That was James Moffett's delima in his second essay he wrote. We shouldn't focus so much on pleasing the person who's reading the essay but instead focus on how you really feel about the topic and put everything you have into it.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we must look into ourselves in order to write a good paper or story. I disagree that the school system even taught us to "borrow" our ideas from others to write papers though. I think that was more so us (students) being resourceful and trying to full up the pages to get the assignment over with. When you wrote a paper for your english class in high school and you didn't cite anything in it you weren't even borrowing ideas you were just making up some crappy story that came into your mind because you wanted to give the teacher a paper that she wanted. Therefore i don't even think that we were taught to borrow, but that is just my opinion and how i wrote my papers before taking this class.
ReplyDeleteI think that James Moffett, the author of the story was just whining and complaining the whole time. I didn't find the article inspiring at all. When he was saying that his whole life he got A's on all his papers, was I supposed to feel sad? All I read from that was SOB SOB SOB, and then I fixed it and my paper was better. BORING. Time for something that's actually inspirational.
ReplyDeleteI believe that you need to write from your heart rather then try to write what you think others want to hear. James Moffett wrote his first paper about living in Los Angeles because that is what he thought the audience would be more interested in. It was incredibly cliche and he didn't pour his true emotions into the paper. He did much better when he wrote about his small town that he was passionate about. You have to write what is important to you and not others. Writing is not something to be faked.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your blog. I also loved this short story. Its so true how most teachers don’t even enjoy the books they read and they mostly hate reading our essays. Why do they even do it? The school system is messed up in the way its trying to explain the significance of writing and reading. Schools make us write about boring topics that usually don’t apply to our lives in any way. If they only understood that we don’t car about the meaning of The Crucible or Beowulf. Its ok for them to suggest those classics to us but they shouldn’t force them upon us because it just makes people hate reading. The school system is constantly sending kids through grades hating reading even more every year. They need to let us pick books to read and write about or maybe give us a list that we can choose from so we at least can make a choice on something hat interests us. Its not the teachers fault most of the time so I’m definitely not blaming them.
ReplyDeleteA lot of teachers have told me to "write about what I know". It's true that when you write about something you know and are passionate about it it shows through your work. I also believe that people who say they completely make up stories when they are writing are wrong. You may be making up some facts, but something in your life made you come up with those ideas. Whether you realize it or not something influenced you to write about purple pandas with wings, maybe its your favorite color, or you always wanted to fly. In life I believe everything happens for a reason even if we don't understand the reason. The same concept applies to writing even if we don't see why we chose to write a depressing story something inside of us does.
ReplyDeleteI love the way you worded your opinion. It makes sense, and I couldn't agree more. The school systems are so messed up in the fact that we study study study on how to take a test...not on material that we will actually need to know for real world situations. Example: the FCAT, we learn all of 8th and 10th grade how to write for it, we spend all of our time in english writing essays that will give us passing scores for this ONE standardized test. But the real winner is knowing how to write passionately, not how to use the correct transition words and having enough paragraphs. When you are able to really dig into what emotion you felt while reading or even writing a piece, that is the true art.
ReplyDeleteI agree with this. School never taught us how to write by thinking outside of the box. They gave us a basic structure that we should live by for the rest of our lives. Teachers never taught us how to actually steal from ourselves to make our writing even better. The way that we are taught to write in school is without any emotion at all. We basically have to teach ourselves how to write with our emotions in mind. The first essay that Moffett wrote was boring and dull because that is what he thought the professor wanted from him. On the second time around he actually used his own emotions to write a piece that was more entertaining to read. I feel like I've had the same experience as him. I used to hold back in my writing and then I realized that if I want a paper to be good I can't hold back.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with you. I now know that if I let myself "steal" from my inner emotions and thoughts that I become such a better writer. I write with passion that I steal from my heart. I do not write what others want to hear, but what i want. Schooling before college held me back so much that I didn't even want to write at all. Moffett changed his style, at first because he got a bad grade but then realized that it was great because he learned how to write with his own emotions. I am so happy that i write for myself now, and no one can hold me back now.
ReplyDeleteOur whole lives we have been learning the many different "correct" ways to write a good paper, but we never truly learn how to put ourselves into them. I rmemeber most of my teachers telling me to "write about what I know" and to "use personal examples in our essays" but I dont think they truly meant it until now, in college. When I would try and put myself into my paper it wouldnt hit them like I thought it should. They would barely even notice it. They would harp on the sentence structure before they would even look at the personal feelings I put in. I never knew how to properly put in a personal story until now. The topics were never really about us, they were about society or the word we did in school that we didnt care about to begin with, so instead of adding true personal feelings we would just put in what we knew our teachers wanted to hear and focused on the sentence structure and numbers of paragraphs. Even on standardized testing they asked me my view on technology in the classroom and if I thought it would make learning easier or if it would be a waste of money. The graders of that essay didnt care what I thought, they just wanted to see if I could write sentences correctly and use big vocab words. It was easy to make up stuff and make them happy. But turning in our first draft I felt I needed to so the same revisions as James Moffet had to do. I had to make it more personal and not so fake.
ReplyDeleteYay typing from my phone! I completely agree to the idea that we have been raised to write poorly. I can still remember some of my old teachers telling me "always start with a rhetoric question. People love it." It was like there were rules you always had to follow in order to get a good score. And then when I decided to be creative, I got yelled at for not following the template. Its a good thing I hated all my teachers so I didn't care. And I also agree that the best papers don't come from format, it comes from emotion. Format isbjust a supplement. And borrowing others ideas makes it hard to fully graspbtheir concepts and write a deep paper.
ReplyDeleteI could not agree more, writing is most definitely based on how much of ourselves we can expose in our pieces. Maybe “based” is not the correct word but it is definitely an important asset to being a good writer. This is not always an easy task to do though, but it is one that if done, will produce magic. People do not like to read dull things; instead we like to feel a connection with the writer, we like to get lost in their thoughts and imagination. We want to feel their emotions, to get to know them. A good writer is one who is able to pull his reader into his words, uniting the reader and the writer in a meaningful and emotional bond.
ReplyDeleteI agree that when you "steal from yourself" this is the only way to make your writing your own. If you're just taking outside knowledge you know about something and referencing other people work in your story, it's not necessarily your own. James' paper was a really good example of this considering even his professor was able to read the paper and tell that it did not come from his own thoughts and emotions. Most authors rely on their emotions and feelings to pull out a good, well written piece that they can claim as their own. As we grow up we are taught the basic structures on how to write a paper, but as we get older we realize that writing really has no format. You just let yourself type what comes from the inside and see what you create.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we are taught to only write what we believe our teacher wants. I think it is important to consider your audience but you have to be happy with your work when it comes down to it. I have noticed with papers that I have written that when I write what I am actually thinking, writing is no longer painful. I spend much more time on essays that are about topics that I enjoy.
ReplyDeleteSchool systems are great but really limit the full potential of students. Teachers teach students from kindergarten by the book. Everything is structured constructed by the school district on what they feel the students need to learn to move on to the next grade level. Some of the material is great but by not having students think outside the box or write and act freely with their work I feel really limits their potential. School systems should open up a bit more and really help their students with their creative side in order for them to become a well rounded student.
ReplyDeleteVery well said. “Stealing from yourself” as you say is an interesting concept and an even more interesting way to look at it. Not just expressing yourself but almost as if you’re stealing the ideas from one part of yourself (your emotions) and replacing them in another (writing). It’s definitely an interesting way to look at true passionate writing.
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