Reflection #1

Many author’s today believe that writing is just typing away at a keyboard or scribbling words on a piece of paper. I was that way until I read these four essays, “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott, “Why I Write” by Joan Didion, “To See Your Story Clearly, Start by Pulling the Wool over Your Eyes” by Kent Haruf and “For Authors, Fragile Ideas Need Loving Every Day” by Walter Mosley. Each author discusses their truth behind how everyone has an individual style to produce work. In each essay they present similar ideas on how writing isn’t as easy as we believe it to be, but can be a challenge in itself.

Anne Lamott describes what it is like to have the voices of critics in your head. She states “ Then imagine that there is a volume-control button on the bottle. Turn it all the way up for a minute, and listen to the stream of angry, neglected, guilt-mongering voices.”. Most often when someone writes they can most always here someone critiquing every word they write. The author of this essay is saying that we may need to listen to the voices but we also need to know when to take it off. I find that when I write, I always think how my readers would see certain words that I write especially in my first draft. After reading “Shitty First Drafts” I learned that when I am writing it is common to make a mistake, and I shouldn’t stop until the end because I can always revise later to prevent ideas from slipping away.

After reading “Why I write” I saw that the way that we write, even our speech can develop pictures in someone’s mind so we have to write so our audience see what we intended them to. Joan Didion states “The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in you mind. The picture dictates the arrangement.” When I read I almost often can see a picture of what is happening in my head, so Didion is saying if we write with correct grammar the audience should be able to see what we intend them to.
I agree with Walter Mosley when he says “the ideas have no physical form. They are smoky concepts liable to disappear at the slightest disturbance.” There have been many times when I would be writing a story and my mom would come ask me something and I would completely lose what I was thinking. The author also says “The next day you have to return to tend to your flimsy vapors. You have to brush them, reshape them, breathe into them and gather more.” Writing a piece is never easy, especially when you become distracted because a chapter could have been forming in your head and with a disturbance it can be lost.

In “To See Your Story Clearly, Start by Pulling the Wool over Your Own Eyes” the author states “ I believe it is one of the most important attributes to achieve that and its simplicity and clarity. Those would be the holy trinity in the art of fiction writing.”. In writing a fiction story you are basically blending together lies and telling the audience it in a realistic matter. When I read other stories, I look for it to be brought together so that the story has a certain flow to it. This also happens when I write because I want people to understand my story and be able to gain ideas off of it if they need to.

What all of these authors have in common is that they understand the true difficulties of what it means to be a writer. After reading the essays, I feel as if my work can be stronger because I picked up good advice from all of them. We all are critiqued with our pieces, they can become lost if we don’t hold unto them, but if we keep writing then our stories can be heard.