567 words of something

It is always a humbling and enlightening experience to engage in piece of writing that is a self-applicable topic, such as recognizing and revising common writing flaws. Though this particular piece was rather on going and belaboring on minor points, it was non the less understandable and relevant.

The titled sections were notably common errors in nearly all writing and were topics that at first glance appeared simple so avoid. To my detriment though I soon found that each and every discussed topic was inherently hidden within my engrained style of writing. For instance the sections titled “Avoid the obvious content”, initially I jogged over this section assuming I foreknew everything it was going to say and that is was not something I needed to work on. Upon reading it a second time and attempting to write a blog about it I realized how often and how comfortable we are of writing the obvious content. Obviously this section was about content put it papers that everyone already is aware of, content the remedies itself useless because it is so well-known. As it mentions, often this information is included simply to meet a word count requirement, which is what I find myself doing nearly every time I sit down to write. This flaw is one that I was already aware of but did not want to protrude effort to demolish. I always figured that I could some how speak of the immediate idea just in an innovative way to make it sound like a completely different idea than what it, at is root, was. In high school I could choose the answer or subject that every other student also picked but attach so many extravagant words and extended sentences that it sounded poignant but was actually quite shallow and obvious.

The topic titled “take the less usual side” was a subject I have rarely devoted much thought to. After reading this section I found that in my own writing I lean towards my personal convictions rather than daring to oppose them and learn how to write powerful persuasions regardless of personal preferences.  For instance, I am passionate about Christianity so naturally if assigned a piece on religion I would immediately create a paper about Christianity. What Roberts convinced me of is that although you do not always have to defer from eminent matters you also, as a qualified writer have the freedom and power to write effectively any topic given to you, and when given the choice can be brave enough to choose the unconventional flavor!

Society does, often subconsciously; slither its way into our writing, from drawing us towards filling papers with the obvious content to confining us to choose uncontroversial topics. Another pull society has on our writing is what Roberts called “modesty”. We have been taught that saying “mentally ill” is a far more polite way to say retarded so within our writing we sway towards more vague explanations than seemingly “rude” words that may offend another or shatter a norm. If you return to the top of this blog you will see I called the reading “on going” when in reality all I meant was it took too long to read!

This paper was instrumental in reminding me of personal writing flaws but also refining methods to better my writing. Yet even still, I am anxious to see the next byproduct of Roberts’s instruction!