Sunday, August 25, 2013

My Goals

Personal Problems

I find myself as a writer methodical, detailed, and extremely voiced. This is also one of my downfalls. I put so much detail into my writing even in my academic writing that the fluff starts adding up. In my career here at Washington State University I feel as if I've found a definite style that I use in my writing. In the past I could say that my writing paints pictures with the attributes listed above. But there are still many places of which I could work to improve my own writing; I think most of these places are more mechanical than grammatical to be completely honest but I have been wrong before. To which brings me the quote of that everyone is their worst critic of their own writing.

One of my larger problems or places that I could improve on is not giving sentences that don’t really add any context to my writing or sentences that are FILLER, EMPHASIS, ATTRIBUTE AND DESCRIBE NOTHING in particular of interest or value. These sentences aren't very helpful at all in my writing but they always seem to show up in the best places. A prime example; “To which brings me the quote of that everyone is their worst critic of their own writing”. The quote is actually from one paragraph up. I wasn't really paying attention to what I was writing and thus the nothing sentence appears.

Another of my problems is that I think I put too much of my voice into things, I put too much emphasis on some of my points and thus push others to the side because the way I write. This is something that is a little harder to show in my own writing and would take an entire paper to put it into perspective for you. But it does happen and I’m aware of it. I guess an example would be;
“In conclusion I would have to say the major points of my style as an arguer is that I like to listen to what other people have to say because sometimes, I’ll admit it, I’m wrong. But when I’m not wrong I do this that way I can also have the floor as well. It’s not so much how I do it but how it is seen as a token of respect to let them have their say and they should let you have your own. My other characteristic of being emotional or calm is the same. If the person I’m arguing against becomes very emotional I tend to become emotional as well just to fight back their incoming verbal assault. Then I’m also very calm and cold when arguing with people depending on my own personal relationship to them”.

In this short “half” paragraph of mine, I ended up shoving some of the other points in the paper aside feeling that they weren't as important to cover again in the conclusion.

            The last thing I really need to work on is my over use of commas. I use them so much in the first few drafts of a paper that my sentences become so LONG AND WITHOUT MEANING AND REPETITIVE that my readers loose interest or find it hard to understand what I was trying to convey. This over use leading onto run on sentences has been a work in progress since high school. I've been consistently getting better so the examples are harder to find but I do remember back in high school where my peer grader looked at the paper and gave it back saying that they couldn't read it because it was so hard to understand.


            My goal at this stage in my writing is to get better at not using filler sentences, to fix my voicing in my papers so that points don’t go to the wayside, and to continue to fix the problem of commas in my sentences.