Writing has always been a central aspect of my life. Ever since I acquired even an elementary grasp of the English language, I have felt a constant urge to express my thoughts and feelings through some written medium. My extensive appreciation for a wide range of literature – from Orwell to Dostoyevsky and Hemingway to Fitzgerald – as well as my ineffable love for film, music, poetry, and the visual arts has allowed me to grow deeply passionate about creating meaningful things and crafting impactful stories.
In some ways, however, the deep sense of passion I have for my written work can be quite the curse, especially so in the academic context. There’s just so much to write about, so many stories to tell, so many ideas to explore … but never enough time.
This almost insatiable need of mine to write about anything and everything, coupled with an overall lack of time to do so, results in a debilitative climate of perfectionism and self-doubt that makes the writing process more agonising than enjoyable, which ultimately prevents me from writing in the first place. I find that I spend so much time deciding what to write about and obsessing over small details that I end up rushing the final product and producing something far from my original intent. This is something I would like to begin addressing through my studies in English 30-1, and through various means, I intend to become more confident, self-assured, and streamlined in my unique writing process. Moreover, I intend to reconnect myself with what I loved about writing in the first place, re-evaluating the small intricacies of my writing process to better support my enjoyment of English as a whole.
PROBLEM 1: PERFECTIONISM
When writing, particularly for academic disciplines, I subconsciously transform into my own worst critic. Despite my best efforts to overcome this initial sense of anxiety, my writings usually all start out the same way; an incessant back-and-forth of typing and backspacing, thus resulting in a principally miserable experience that destroys my own ideas through obsessive self-editing. This effect is particularly exacerbated in testing environments such as the Critical-Analytical Essay or Personal Response to Texts assignments, where I often spend asinine amounts of time exhausting myself and writing material that I am rarely proud of. To combat this, I will commit myself to the following;
To improve my creative writing; I will commit to journaling at least once a day for 100 days.
By committing myself to the practice of journaling for 100 days, I hope to become more comfortable with putting my ideas to paper. This sort of stream-of-consciousness writing that journaling requires will allow me to write freely, without allowing self-criticism to get in the way; a skill that, once sufficiently developed, I can apply to my other writing ventures and academic assignments. Additionally, it will help to establish a routine that will allow me more time to put towards creative endeavours.
To improve my academic writing; I will set reasonable time limits to streamline my writing process and prevent myself from embarking on unnecessary tangents.
By the end of English 20-1, I had grown extremely confident in the Critical-Analytical and Personal Response assignments. The thought of writing in such an unfriendly and forced environment as the testing centre had once terrified me, but my work in English 20-1 allowed me to approach these assignments with relative ease.
There was just one problem; I was averaging upwards of six hours of writing at a time; a regiment that was both exhausting and entirely unsustainable. To combat this, I wish to progressively shorten my time in the testing centre by setting hard, non-negotiable time limits for myself, discouraging my tendencies towards obsessive revision and unnecessary detail. My intended assignment-by-assignment process is outlined below.
- Critical-Analytical Essay 1 – 4.5 hours.
- Personal Response 1 – 3.5 hours.
- Critical Analytical Essay 2 – 3 hours.
- Personal Response 2 – 2 hours.
PROBLEM 2: LACK OF CONFIDENCE
Throughout all stages of the writing process, I often fall into prolonged periods of self-doubt. While my prior experiences suggest that I am certainly able to write meaningful, impactful things, a fear of being unable to match my prior efforts often seizes me and discourages me from writing at all.
Discuss, discuss, discuss!
I find I write best when I am able to discuss my ideas with others because it allows me to formulate them in speech before setting them down in writing. It also reaffirms my efforts and restores my confidence in finishing certain projects or assignments. Therefore, I will commit myself to meeting with peers, teachers, and editors at every possible opportunity, whether to discuss some of my ideas in planning an upcoming assignment, to workshop some of my rough drafts or to gain feedback from a one-on-one test review. I will then reflect upon each of these meetings by summarising their key points in a journal, thus creating a one-stop resource to which I can refer at any time in search of strategies to improve my writing.
PROBLEM 3: PROLIXITY
One issue that has consistently plagued my writing since Junior High has been its sheer long-windedness. While my meandering writing style has – I’m happy to say – been characterised by many as elegiac and poetic, I am also highly conscious of how verbose it can be at times (as made evident by this very paragraph). After all, conciseness is a mark of any aspiring writer, yet it is a trait that has seemed to constantly elude me.
Thinking and Editing Critically
Recently, however, I got the chance to read George Orwell’s famous essay Politics and the English Language. As a huge fan of Orwell, I was naturally fascinated by how insightfully he connected the innumerable intricacies of English writing to some of the most influential geopolitical events of the twentieth-century. What stood out to me most, however, was this excerpt near the end of the essay:
‘But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails, I think the following rules will cover most cases:
- Never use a metaphor or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active,
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.’
As painful as it may be for me, I will commit myself to employing these rules as governing principles throughout my editing process.
PROBLEM 4: DISILLUSIONMENT
I love literature, mixed media, and the Arts in all their manifestations. In my eyes, there is little in this world greater than reading, experiencing, appreciating, and telling stories through any given medium. My love for storytelling and English Language Arts specifically is one that transcends all purely-academic goals and achievements; it is more so a matter of personal fulfilment and unbridled passion than anything else.
However, in the intense high school environment, I find it can be easy to simply trudge through the course. That often means missing out on the immense value that lies in appreciating and experiencing these incredible stories. To combat this, I have constructed a multi-step plan to extend my learning beyond the expected outcomes of the course.
Reflections and Extensions
For each unit/genre that I complete, I will set aside one day for what I call my ‘portfolio session’ – the name is rather uninspired, but alas, it serves a functional rather than aesthetic purpose undertaken in the spirit of stifling my excessive and unnecessary nature. I am therefore inclined to resist my urge to rename it. During these sessions, I will commit myself to write as much as possible within the given timeframe. This may constitute writing articles reflecting on the text in question and connecting its themes to external principles, or perhaps writing poetry inspired by the text that connects it to my personal experiences in life. Doing this for each unit in English 30-1 will allow me to be as creative as possible while also ensuring I fulfil the curricular requirements set out by this portfolio. Setting a two-day limit also ensures that I will maintain control over my fanatical creative ambitions without compromising my academic wellbeing.
line of best fit 