8. my actual writing life is...
bad. very bad.
well, i suppose it's not bad per se, it's just not super prolific. let's recap my college writing career in a rather large nutshell, shall we?
my first quarter of college, i took an american ethnic studies class. there were two required writing assignments - one short response and one essay - and optional extra credit essays. i didn't do any of the extra credit essays. i probably should've. i don't remember much about the short response, but i do remember i wrote my essay about the music of west side story. given that the essay was supposed to focus more on class topics and such, it was probably not the best choice. whatever. i had fun writing it. it gave me an excuse to rewatch west side story. i'll rewatch wss any chance i get, dangit!!
two quarters later i took an english class. it was very chill. for an english class, there wasn't a whole lot of required writing. just some discussion posts and two essays. my first essay was absolute crap. the book was terrible, the prompt was terrible, and my motivation was terribly low (nothing new there). what was the book, you ask? i'll give you some hints. it was depressing, it was about a woman in crisis, and it lacked a resolution. really narrows it down, eh? my second essay was a masterpiece. somehow i weaved economics, superpowers, and the dystopian genre into a beautifully written writing of beauty.
side note: from this blog, you'd think i'd write like a 9-year old. not true, ok?? i make sure to avoid repeating myself redundantly and i poofread everything!!
winter quarter last year, i took a history of physics class. also very chill. even though we had 4-page essays due every week. i'm sure english majors would be like "well that's what we do every day!!" hush your frickin' faces, imaginary english majors. i'm not a fricking english major like you!! frick the frick off!!
any! how! somehow i managed to scrape together essays each week and get them sent in. this would usually involve me staying up until 1 AM or so on wednesday nights trying to get them finished up. they actually were due friday mornings, but i had early-ish friday morning classes so i didn't wanna stay up late-ish on thursdays. as for the quality of the papers, they were okay. i would usually just pull quotations from the readings and analyze the frick out of them. and i got good scores on most of the papers. i must've fricked up the final essay though, since my grade was a little lower than i expected. whatevs. a pass is a pass.
so now that we've filled the shell up, let's crack it open to find the content!! do kids still know how to use nutcrackers today? maybe they do. am i pushing this analogy too far? yes, most definitely.
as i kinda mentioned yesterday, every essay i have to finish puts me in some sort of writing rut. my writing process can more or less be summed up in three stages:
1) a professor assigns a paper. i look at the prompt and groan internally a lot or a little, depending on how bad the prompt is. 3-7 days before the paper is due, i start worrying about completing it and decide to get crackalackin. yeehaw!
2) i start the paper. i make a nice outline and gather all my ideas into a list of bullet points. i open up microsoft word and stare blankly at it, waiting for words to spring forth. my motivation dissipates and i open up youtube. oops.
3) in a semi-desperate writing frenzy, i slam together a paper by bs-ing my way through the topic. depending on how much time i have left, i proofread it, remove most of the fluff, and spruce up the syntax. and then i usually have a day or two left anyway. what?!
so yeah. as procrastinators go, i could definitely be worse. but i could be a whole lot better though. the only things that really inspire me to write are due dates and grades.
it's really hard for me to explain the writing rut. it's just... i don't feel inspired to write. even the impending due date doesn't prompt me to leap into action until it gets really close. it's kind of scary. and it happens every time.
it seems like the only way to deal with it is to write more. so this blog helps, i guess. i have fun doing it, and whenever i'm super inspired i usually channel it into a post. i suppose that's a good thing.
so outside of this blog and my classes, my writing life is practically nonexistent. but with this challenge, i've gotta write a whole lot more than usual. it's actually quite refreshing, to be honest. these prompts are usually pretty thought-provoking.
maybe the next time i get stuck in the writing rut, it'll be a little bit shallower. one can only hope.
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