Monday, December 19, 2005

Monday, December 19, 2005

Love/Hate relationship Current mood: relieved Category: Writing and Poetry I have a love/hate relationship with writing. And, I could probably bet my life that I'm not the only writer who does. I'm an English major, and not only that, I'm one of the small percentage of Graduate English majors who want to go into composition/rhetoric rather than straight literature, so it's even more debilitating that I maintain this love/hate relationship. I have had to write three papers over the past three weeks or so: one 3000 word (12 page) one 1500 word (6 page) and one 2000 (8-9 page). The first two I had to write for my Film Studies class. I liked my professor. He's lovely, and even puts up with extreme procrastination from students like me. However, I was told, by someone who did her master's thesis with him, that in grading papers, he is all about style and not content. I knew I was screwed when I heard this. Style is subjective. Style stinks of being in art school, where everything is subjective. There are certain concretes in writing: good research and good, solid, clear writing. You can always fall back on these things, but style...what constitutes style? I stressed out about this paper after (and even before) hearing this. Even so, I focused on content (as is always my inclination). I'm big on ideas, especially new ones, and I believe new ideas should be given room to grow without too much criticism of nuances. I had eighteen sources for this twelve page paper, plus a lot of personal, local knowledge. I received, weirdly enough, a kind of preview of my grade, which apparently will be between a B and an A. I put my heart and soul and most of my history into this paper. The last paper I wrote for this class, a movie review, I wrote totally last minute. I got a B . The final paper for the class, I just finished. It was a post-modernist criticism of Trainspotting - not totally original, not well thought out, not a lot of time spent on it. I'll probably get an A. I think, when I try to write well, that I overthink things, and write badly. I just reread the total last minute (8 page) paper I wrote for my other class, Writing Center Theory. It's good, probably better than the paper I spent three weeks writing, and I got an A. I've tried to be a better student. I have tried to incorporate the techniques of revising and editing I'm supposed to teach my students, but if grades are a reflection of my efforts, then the more revising, the worse. Should I just resume my non-revising, last minute, off the cuff, romantically (in a Byron, Shelley, Keats, not Bridget Jones) influenced manner of writing? I wrote my application for Graduate School that way. I think I wrote it in half an hour. I honestly don't know what to think anymore. If you guys have any thoughts, let me know.