Read through the following quotes offering reasons to write. Pick one and write about how it applies to why you write. Spend about 15 minutes writing a response to one of them.
"I write to understand as much as to be understood." - Elie Wiesel
"Writing keeps me from believing everything I read." - Gloria Steinem
"A writer is a reader moved to emulation." - Saul Bellow
"Writing is a means to unlocking the great mysteries of the mind: thoughts, passions, innovations..." - Michael Buckhoff
"The mere process of writing is one of the most powerful tools we have for clarifying our own thinking. I am never as clear about any matter as when I have just finished writing about it." - James Van Allen
"Writing is a struggle against silence." - Carlos Fuentes
"Learning to write well takes time and much effort, but it can be done." - Margaret Mead
"It has always been my feeling that writing must come out of living, and the writer is no more than his personality endures in the crucible of his times." - Margaret Walker
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." - William Butler Yeats
"Read, read, read... Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read!" - William Faulkner
"You are always going back and forth between the outline and the writing, bringing them closer together, or just throwing out the outline and making a new one." - Annie Dilliard
"How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" - E. M. Foster
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I chose the Annie Dilliard quote, "You are always going back and forth between the outline and the writing, bringing them closer together, or just throwing out the outline and making a new one." Here was my response:
One time last year I had an essay to write about the similarities and common themes in three plays by Anton Chekhov. I had a couple of months to read and analyze the plays and to write the paper, but the weekend before it was due I decided that I no longer liked my outline or the way I had written my rough draft. I decided that I needed to start over almost from scratch with only a few days before the due date. This paper was supposd to be 9-12 pages long and represent a large portion of my grade.
I made a new outline, which was much more structured and on-topic than the first, and set about writing a brand-new paper. This time, rather than almost forgetting that I had an outline in the first place, I began by adding information to my new outline, then reorganized it until I was satisfied with the information. Then I just added words to my outline and reformatted it into sentences and paragraphs. If this was not bringing my writing closer to the outline, then I don't know what is!
When writing creatively, I tend to put my ideas down in a "timeline" format as they pop into my head. I joined National Novel Writer's Month (NaNoWriMo) last year, even though I knew that I would never be able to finish as November is simply too busy. Instead of writing my "novel" straight through from the beginning, I looked at the timeline which I already had in place and wrote bits and pieces.
I had outlines set up with each character's background, appearance, and family history, along with any other pertinent information. The character outlines and timeline which I already had in place helped me to stay on track, and I am still using them and writing bits and pieces at a time to this day.
I still plan on finishing this story, though I have no idea when I will finally be done with even just the rough draft. The characters are real in my head, and I feel like I need to get their voices out on paper. I'm also in the beginning processes of setting up an outline for a second story, which I will switch to whenever I have no new ideas for the first one.
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