When I write an essay, I don't really have a process.
My brain is a very busy place when it's not being held down by thoughts of writing up campaigns to bring Pluto back to the Planet Club and wondering how Santa Claus is able to live on one day of work and why no one else is upset with his enslavement of elves and reindeers. When I have to concentrate on an essay, I don't write anything until I have a good first sentence. For me, a good opening sentence = gold. I sit and I read and I watch television and listen to The Onion podcasts until that good first sentence comes about. And when that sentence does come about, then the essay begins to form.
I begin to type whatever words are being hammered on my brain. Sometimes it flows and sometimes it doesn't. Each time I approach the essay, I write until I can't write anymore. And then I go back to the essay when I have more words to add to it. I write and write and when I'm finished, I go back over the words and make sure I have a certain flow to the essay. In this class, I didn't find myself switching around paragraphs or overthinking things or erasing entire pages due to them not feeling just right - I left everything where they were. It felt as though I was writing semi-unconsciously.
The personal essay/memoir I wrote was a deeply personal one. I didn't censor myself like I did all those other times trying to write about the same subject. Everything just felt...right.
I did use my personal journal to flesh out ideas, but those words were probably along the lines of "omg, nothing is flowing and I can't write this essay!!!oh noes!!!" and was not as well done as Emily Chase's journal entries.
Okay, so maybe I do have a process. :D
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2 comments:
I want to include Pluto and the other dwarf planets. Right now my psyche has been destroyed by NASA scientists and the astrological community.
I would like to see how your "Golden First Sentence" syndrome either helps or hurts you as a writer. Instead of focusing on a particular piece, I would like to see you reflect on this.
Your discussion of the good first sentence reminds me of the novelist in Camus' The Plague. He is writing a novel but he can't get started until he has a first sentence that is simply "hats off" (I read it in English so I am not sure what the expression was in French - but "hats off" is how it read in the tranlation). Of course - he never wrote the novel. I am glad you have better luck with this strategy.
It feels like the first sentence is more than the words. It is the feeling, the image and the idea - what sets up what you have to say. I am struck by the fact that you seem to describe a writing process with so little revising. Is that accurate? It is so hard for me to imagine. I NEVER come close to what I have to say untill I have re-written many times. Writing is an essential part of my thinking process. I get my ideas from looking at what I wrote.
But different writers are different. And your process produces beautiful writing. What do you think I can learn from it?
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