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August 16, 2005

Writing

I received a comment on my last post that I felt like deserved a full post as a
response. Childress asked: "How do you write as well as you do? Just practice?"
My answer is... that I think that writing is very subjective. I dont think that
everyone agrees on who is a good writer and who isn't. If there was a magical
formula to good writing, then we wouldn't need half of the published authors who
add hardbacks to our store shelves. I don't know where my writing came from and
I'm not too sure it is that good. My mother is constantly reading my blog and
telling me what a good writer I am. This is coming from the woman that has
maintained the nickname "Mrs. Miriam-Webster" for the majority of my life. My
mother is a great writer, even though she is going to get killed if she doesn't
quit sending in letters to the editor about the "Anti-Christ". In high school, I
was the science and math nerd. I made straight A's in math, science (especially
chemistry), computers, etc. Then I would walk over to my least favorite class,
English, and was constantly bombarded with papers with big red C's (and
sometimes lower) on the top. The mediocre bashing continued thru the first
couple of years at Baylor when I was stuck taking English and Writing courses.
Throughout my years of teaching, I would send emails and letters to my mother to
"revamp" them. In November of 2004 I lost my job. I decided I was going to take
this opportunity to go back to school and I started the application process for
culinary school. I filled out all the forms within about 10 minutes of making
this decision, but as normal, I put off writing the essay till the night before
we were going to make our trip to Dallas for my admissions meeting. It was about
midnight when I finished putting some words down on paper and emailed it across
the room (yes, I'm that lazy) to my mother so she could "fix" it. To my
amazement she didn't send but one typographical error and one missing comma back
to me and started telling me how good it was. She printed it out and read it to
my dad and called my grandparents and read it to them. Flash forward a few
months. It is week 7 of my first quarter of culinary school and I have to write
a paper for my Management class. What made matters worse was that this paper was
over a book and I hate to read more than anything. I put it off and I put it
off. I finished reading the book about midnight the night before the paper was
due. I had a fun winter cold and took a big dose of NyQuil before going to bed.
I set my alarm and woke up about 5am the next morning and sat down to write my
paper. I emailed it to the teacher and went back to bed sick. A few weeks later
I got my paper back with the grade 10/10 on the top. I just about fell over. The
next quarter I took an online class where we were writing papers every week. I,
again, put those off till the last minute. I started blogging in February. I was
nervous when I started because I had always been given the idea that I was a C
writer. For some reason, blogging comes very easy to me, I don't put it off like
it is a chore.. like scrubbing the toilet. I don't have the answers on how to
become a good writer, but another blogger, The Phantom Professor, who just
happens to be a writing teacher, has offered to teach a writing class on her
blog. The class starts today and you post your assignments in her comments
section. I am taking the class because I want to learn how to become a better
writer. Childress. I guess you can say your suggestion that writing is practice
would be a good one. I just wish I didn't hate to practice so much.

Posted by FutureFoodTVStar at August 16, 2005 11:18 AM

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Posted by: Karagape at August 16, 2005 08:28 PM

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