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Upon receiving any assignment in school, the very first thing I take note of is the page limit set by the teacher. If the topic does not immediately grab my attention, I automatically know it will be Just another essay that I will end up doing Just because it is a requirement. When it comes to actually writing the essay, I usually Just situate myself with my laptop and freely allow my thoughts to organize themselves across the laptop screen.
However, after Rachel Hades visited our class, I realized that there is a much better way to properly organize my ideas relating to the topic beforehand, ether than combining the process of brainstorming and writing together. It is important as a writer to be clear on what you are writing about. If the writer is clear, the reader is able to have a clear understanding of what the writer is trying to communicate to the reader, allowing the reader to relate better to the topic. By being clear, I am helping the writer not get confused as well as helping myself stay focused on my own writing.
If the writer looses focus of the subject being discussed, he/she starts rambling about the topic or, worse, will start rambling Just to fill the page with words. By being clear, the reader is able to understand the details being emphasized. For instance, if I were to say, “l love my sister,” the writer would wonder if I am the older or younger sibling, letting curiosity take control. By making my writing clear I can simply say, “Being the youngest child in my family and having a older sister to look upon for guidance like a role model, I can express how much I love my sister. By being clear, I am expressing who my sister is and quickly indicating one of the reasons why I wrote that I love her. Along with being clear, however, it is also important to include details. Details help the reader understand the text better and provide a visual aid to help them imagine the scenario. Adding details make the text more interesting to read and to write. By adding details, you are able to make your writing come to life and have a picture of exactly what you are trying to say.
For instance, when Rachel Hades wrote the poem “Plutarch On The Plane,” she wrote it while sitting outside in the lobby waiting for her plane. However, she claimed that she was in the plane to make it more interesting. By saying she was in the plane, the reader is able to picture her sitting in a plane listening to someone say “Plutarch” ether then Just outside of the plane. In order to add detail to my writing, I can take simple sentences that are hard to picture and add life into them.
For example, instead of saying “The sky looked like it was going to rain soon so all the children packed up for the picnic and hurried inside,” I can make the sentence more interesting by saying “While the kids were having a picnic outside, one kid stared up to the sky and noticed that the clouds were getting gray, the sky was dark blue, and the sun was slowly getting covered as the clouds got bigger and bigger. ” Just by adding a little more detail of the sky, the second sentence seems more interesting and vivid to read, making the reader want to read more and anticipate what happened next.
Along with details, it is also important to engage in learning new vocabulary words as well. It is important to know vocabulary words because they can improve your writing by making it sound more sophisticated and readable. Knowing vocabulary words is important but it is more important to understand the meaning of the word and how to use it rather then Just memorizing the word. Rachel Hades talk about how she knows so many vocabulary words since childhood. This was primarily due to her father being an educator and mother working as a teacher.
Another influencing factor was the environment of her childhood, which consisted of reading books instead of sitting glued in front of a TV. Even though she grew up in this type of environment and many of us did not, it is still not too late to learn new vocabulary words. By simply reading for an hour a day or picking up something that entertains you such as a magazine, you would be able to learn new words. Vocabulary words make help in making you a better writer by making your writing interesting, repressions, and sophisticated. Along with vocabulary words, it is essential to revise your work consistently.
From personal experience, I must admit that I consider my essay finished the moment I write my last sentence. If perhaps I am forced to proofread, I quickly skim through it once. Otherwise, I would not even bother to touch it once before handing it in. Revision is an important key factor to becoming a better writer. It is necessary to look at your work more then Just once or twice in order to confidently say it is perfect. Rachel Hades said her poems usually go through fifteen or sixteen revision a day until she is confident that they are flawless.
It is important to be hard on yourself and tell yourself that your work can be improved because that is the only way you will try to make an effort to revise it over and over again. When revising, it is important to cut unnecessary information out that make your writing long, boring, and hard to understand. A good writer is one that revises his or her work and sees it on the next time magazine as the front cover. Rachel Hades gave me many tips on how to become a better writer by following simple directions that she reviewed in class. By making your writing clear, the reader is able to understand it more.
By adding small details, your writing becomes more interesting and vivid. By building your vocabulary, you are able to use and understand big words. Lastly, by revision, you are able to make your work look perfect and presentable. Along with all this, there is one key step that every writer should do before even thinking about writing an essay: brainstorm. By brainstorming your ideas, you are able to develop new ideas. Free writing helps you open your imagination to making you’re writing as perfect as it can possibly get, Just like this essay.