How I Write

A lot of Romano's words hold true for me. He talked about getting comfortable when writing and finding the places and things that make you want to write.

My best writing is probably done when I'm alone in my room. I'll either sit on my bed and write in a notebook and just write my thoughts or poems and short things, or I'll bring my laptop to my room and type away on my desk until I need a break. I used to do most of my writing in my family's living room area where our desktop computer is, but lately that has been getting too distracting unless I'm alone and it's late at night. It doesn't matter for me much where I am as long as I'm in a comfortable seat, and feel safe in my environment without distractions.

When I was on vacation in Upper Michigan, I went and sat by a lake for two hours just thinking, listening to music and writing so fast and with so much feeling and emotion that I don't know if I would ever feel comfortable publicly displaying some of the things I wrote then. I could tell that that writing was very driven by passion because I went back to look at it just recently and noticed that it took on a very different style than most of my writing. The sentences were short but descriptive. I also didn't do much to break things into paragraphs because when it came out, I was just putting my thoughts almost directly onto a page. Only when I typed these things up the other day did I actually put things into paragraphs.

Stylistically, I often write in fairly long sentences. They are not as long as Mary Wollestonecraft, but compound sentences that have many appositives and often multiple, descriptive adjectives to describe one or more subjects or objects. When I go back and proof-read, I'm very hesitant to change my style at all. Occaisonally I'll but a sentence backwards or change two sentences around because it sounds better or makes more sense to someone reading it. Most of the time, though, I like the words I used the first time and the order they first appeared for me.

At times I feel like my writing is not accesible to readers because I'm afraid I am writing like a textbook or even a politician of the 1700s. I often fear that my thoughts get too strung out, that I tangent too much, and the style and language I use is too heavy. Sometimes I think that I wouldn't even want to read my own writing except for the fact that when I go back to read things, they are clearly things I'm interested in. My writing ends up being okay. I don't like all of it, obviously, but it is readable in the end. I've sometimes gone back to old papers and marked them up and said things differently to see how I've improved from my writing in middle school or even as a freshman.

When Dr. Romano talked about proofing a draft, he emphasized using wide margins and double spacing to make the paper easy to read and accesible to comments. I like to have the same. As much as I believe in conserving paper, I don't like to proof without having a hard copy to write on. That's why I've begun to use the mark-up tool on Microsoft Word when I'm revising papers and don't want to waste ink or paper.

As far as the main theme, Dr. Romano is trying to get across, I feel that I'm doing a better job everytime I write of trusting my language. In the past, every sentence I wrote would take a minute or more of deliberation. I would think, "Is this what I want to say? Does this have some wit to it? Is this serious enough?" Now, I feel like I'm slowly getting better at just writing what I think and having it come out in such a way that it does work. Unfortunately, my thoughts aren't always organized enough for this to work.

Finally, the tone with which I write varies often from piece to piece. In most pieces I've written, one will find a satirical or sarcastical sense of humor evident. Sometimes it will be a very childish or ironic remark in the midst of a fairly serious subject. This is me being me in my writing. However, at times, I leave the humor out because I just get so caught up with something that I don't allow my little wits and jokes to spice-up my writing. On the other hand, there have been papers that I go into intending to be funny to keep the mood light and the reader poisoned with laughter.