I liked reading the tips; they were really enjoyable. Some that resonated with me was:
- you'll have time to read after college (thank god)
- Don't misspell dialect (because I do to add an effect towards a person's personality)
- Don't describe feelings, instead write the emotions through the senses.
And most importantly (at least to me),
- Put it away and rewrite it later.
I don't know how many times Sari has mentioned that we should put off our writing and come back to it later. Since I am doing my portfolio for my UNST class, I have had to look through some of my old writings, since my freshman year up until now. I am shocked at all the typos and grammatical mistakes, not to mention the awful descriptions or lack thereof. I couldn't agree more that when you put something away and go back to it, you see it in a different light. Some other tips included what you should write about versus what you don't like to read, which I agree. Why would you want to write something when you yourself don't like it? You're going to be force-feeding other people that will grow to dislike you as a writer and there goes your reputation.
Kathy Z.
Kathy,
ReplyDeleteI feel the same about going back and reading some of my old papers as well. It's almost worse than reading an old diary. I agree that most of Dillard's rule were a review of what we have been learning for the past four (or five) years, but hopefully by the time we graduate, we'll have learned them, practiced them, then forgotten them altogether so we can write whatever we're going to write.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete(Re-posted since I forgot my name.)
ReplyDeleteOne central thing about this article is that these things are universal truths about writing. It is just that we are all too carried away sometimes and tend to forget about these things. I agree with you that I feel different about my old pieces now--it seemed perfect at the time, but now I see some imperfection in them.
Hae-Lim Lee