Writing Bad Real Bad

I just sat down at my computer, looking over the announcements to ensure that I had got everything that I had need to for this class as wrapped. I had done all the readings and wrapped up my Re-genre pitch but when I read the first sentence I realized I had totally spaced the blog. So in the spirit of the readings this week I am just going to let my writing run free and tell just what I got out of these pieces.

The first piece really intrigued me was "Writing as Practice" by Natalie Goldberg. I had never thought about the ways that writing could be directly compared to something like running in which we get better the more often we do it. I mean it makes sense when you think about it but I had often thought of writing as simply being an innate skill that a person is either good at or they're not. Thinking back to the classes I took in my earlier college years I can look back on the ones where everyday we were doing some sort of writing in class and realize that these activities truly did help my writing, though often times I would stare at the blank page and be at a loss for words. This relates to another one of the readings, "Write before Writing." This may be one of the pieces that I was truly missing within my procedure. I generally sit down and just try to pound out whatever it is that I am working on. It usually involves staring at my computer for several hours before I finally put down my first words. Hopefully this quick writing before writing will help me today.

The second piece that peaked my interest was "The Importance of Writing Badly." It interested me for several reason: first it was written by our professor, and secondly it was something that I had been working on for the past several years and has truly helped me. Early in my career I wanted every single thing that I wrote to be perfect. Every sentence had to be perfect. This lead to me absolutely dreading writing and putting it off. I would find any thing more enjoyable than writing. It made college pretty hard especially as an English major. I knew that this way of writing just wasn't working for me. I decided that instead of making everything perfect I would instead just not care. I would write as much as I could as fast I could. And this truly helped me. It took a little bit of time but now I feel like I can get my ideas out on the page without fear.