Preface

Getting started. That's always the most difficult part.

I've always written a lot, for a number of reasons. I'm a visual person; I make lists, I take notes. I also grew up without the internet until I was twenty years old. So I wrote my fair share of postcards and letters to grandma and my friends when I was young (a long, long time ago). I'm also a musician and a shower singer, and as such I have the unevitable plethora of original compositions and lyrics hidden in a drawer somewhere. They were of course all meant to be number one hits had I only managed to write more than a few verses of each. In elementary and junior high school, one of my favorite activities in French class was creative writing. I've always loved words. I would keep my favorites listed in a little notebook: pleiad, farandole, tintinnabulation and other ukuleles. My mother still sends me the latest version of the French dictionary every few years.

Over the years though, with the advent of email and instant messaging, I have--like most--succombed to the temptation of simplified written exchanges, one-sentence updates and internet-specific acronyms. Getting back into composing proper essays and reclaiming what used to be my style has proven to be a bit of a challenge. But it feels great to spend time rediscovering the mental processes that transpose my thoughts into written words.

Going back to academic writing has confirmed that I no longer translate at all, but actually fully think in English. It used to be a bit of a struggle, as I would often forget half of my intended meaning during the time it took to translate parts of it. I now see my mind follow the same patterns in its English creative process as it does in French. While I first believed I had no particular rituals or mechanisms associated with my writing, I realize it is untrue if I think about it for a moment.

I need silence, which is why I mostly write late at night. I need to be comfortable, which is why I don't own a desk. My couch is my friend. I need to have a detailed outline with quotes before I attempt to write an essay. Which is why the writing part usually doesn't take too long. However I do need a bit of time to get into it. Which is why I never try to start off by writing about the topic at hand. It often begins with mindless typing, along the lines of "It's late and I am sitting here. I think I heard the neighbor's cat. Or maybe the skunk is back. I'm tired. I am supposed to write this paper to dissect a new article from a rhetorical point of view. I actually find that the author is quite cynical although it's not necessarily apparent on the first read...." And then the thoughts start flowing and following the structure of my detailed outline. My mind is usually a sentence ahead of my fingers, and I have to try and keep up, which leads to long-winded or run-on sentences and frequent wordiness, a recurring comment from classmates who workshopped my position paper--and which I agree with. Once I am done, I go back to the beginning and delete my "automatic typing", which I replace with an introduction. That is usually the only part of an essay which I don't compose while in a "creative trance". Truth be told, aside from the introduction I would have a very hard time quoting anything at all from an essay of mine even five minutes after completing my first draft.

Unless I am taking four online classes at the same time and am struggling to make the deadline on several papers at once, I usually like to let a paper "sit" for a day or two until it is completely out of my mind. When I finally read it over, it seems so completely foreign to me that I can see flaws much better. It's easier to be objective when you force your mind to take a step back.

Overall, once I do all the preparatory work--which to me is the most tedious part of a written assignment--the writing itself comes fairly naturally as long as I am in the right environment. In this particular course, having to juggle with 3 other classes, work, my children and a move all at once truly was a challenge, and I feel I didn't benefit from the sequence of assignments the way I was meant to. Had I been able to concentrate on the flow of the class and able to keep moving from one assignment to the next while the specific learning points were still fresh, I probably would have enjoyed the course more. I will still organize my essays according to the enthusiasm they elicited in me, from favorite to least favorite, because I am very grateful for the joy I experienced in writing some of them.

My favorite paper was by far the position paper, because I am both a fan of eloquence and an opinionated person, and nothing thrills me more than the opportunity to state in style my position on an issue I am passionate about. Dissecting someone else's rhetoric is also an activity I enjoy from a purely literary viewpoint due to my academic background. However, in this class I particularly enjoyed the rhetoric analysis because it was not based on literary texts, a first for me. I think it gave my relative pedantism a run for its money by showing me how intricate and fascinating the prose of the "common journalist" can be. I started on that project with great reluctance, only to find myself having quite a bit of fun by the end of it. The argument response would be my third favorite. I normally would have been delighted at the opportunity to tell someone else off, even if only in an essay they would never read, but I felt that the text choices were limiting. My essay felt contrived after I picked an article by default because all the others just seemed worse. And finally, the research paper would have to be the black sheep in this course for me. It has little to do with the assignment itself, which was definitely instrumental in improving my research skills. It was simply too much for me to handle as the term came to a conclusion with final papers and exams in all four of my classes. That last assignment was truly a chore. I will never take so many classes at once again.