"Shitty first drafts" response

While reading "shitty first drives" I had a really easy time connecting to the feelings of the authors who sit down and all they want to do from the begining is write a perfect paper, one that doesnt have to be edited or revised. Of course if we did this it would save us time and energy, but the author of the article makes a good point when she says creating a first draft that doesnt necessaraly flow is a good thing because one sentence that you write could create a whole new idea that would make the paper even better. I agree with the author when she says that alot of times those things you write down in "shitty first drafts" that make an excellent paper wouldnt come up if u were trying to write close to perfect from the get go. Just being able to relax and get all your ideas down on paper is the best way to start a really good paper. Its nice to sit down and not have all that pressure on ur shoulders, feeling like you need to be perfect, becasue eventually, your paper will be perefect, if you just relax when u start! I thought that article was really well written!

(the blogging generation freaks me out)

The truth is I’ve never been truly comfortable with the notion that there are public sites containing the thoughts and ideas of anyone that has the accessibility. Free, (in all sense of the word) press is a great thing. Okay. Sure. I get lost, though, thinking of the fraction of the billions of people in the world who own blogs, and how many of them believe they are ground-breaking, completely original, and absolutely have this inherent human right to blog. From my perspective and previous experiences, there are two kinds of blogs. Mostly, there is an abundance of small blogs, mostly with few subscribers and containing few original thoughts. The latter (and lesser) are great lists and pictures and essays and stories, fictional or nonfictional, the Standout Blogs. Despite this, I still can’t shake my uneasiness towards blogging. More often than not, I come across writing that is wholly self-indulgent and vain, or filled with lols and slang, or just the opposite, with overuse of precious rhetoric and vocabulary. I’m frazzled of wondering if blogs are supposed to be all about you or about populations. I believe that a blog should have writing without any agenda to sound like anything more than who you absolutely are. There shouldn’t be predispositions about fame or popularity. Forget the feigning for attention. Leave the obnoxious wordplay and write. Even while writing this, my jumbled words sound so wrong. My opinion now sounds more decadent than anything I could ever remember reading. I’m wriggling with discomfort with every tap of the keyboard. I guess I’ll have to try to find a balance of this so vain, so modest, essay-like, conversationalist type of writing. For now, I'll stick to my fail blog.

Response to "Clutter" by William Zinsser

I feel that "Clutter" by William Zinsser emphasizes a really important point that people often ignore when they're writing; Words may sound great altogether in a sentence, and your point may get across successfully, but normally a lot of your words are unnecessary.

Zinsser says, in addition, that "each profession has its own jargon to fire at the layman and hurl him back from its walls," referring to the icky style that politicians and professionals use when speaking to the public. This is the most striking point to me because society seems to think that confusing the public will save us from knowing the grim realities. I'm sorry, but no -- its all unnecessary and annoying to me. Zinsser is right in criticizing this, and thats why I like his article and connect with it very well. However, this is a very professional sense of 'clutter', and we are just college students writing essays. Either way, we have our own 'clutter' that we could clean up on, which Zinsser writes about.

This is definitely an article that I would use as a remembrance for writing better essays. It will really help me with writing college-level essays and eliminating the unneeded sentences and words in my papers, and I recommend the rest of you remember the points made in "Clutter" as well for the future.