"I have great essays"

Shadowkitt
Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:42:03 +0000

Ah, jellyya, that idea is so amusing. I don’t mean that in a rude way, but if you think about it the entire process falls into a lose-lose situation. People are pretentious and see nothing wrong with themselves or they have a middle ground and pick and choose what they see as wonderful in themselves or they are completely lacking in any confidence, seeing only how terribly awful they are. There seems to be no way of winning. Even if there were a way around it you encounter false modesty or actual modesty or that weird modesty where the desire to say something is there, but not the desire to profess it everywhere.

God I love people.

On topic! It’s fine to be skeptical, people are right, most people are bad writers, which is why people (like me! and a few others I know directly) get laughed at when they consider writing as a profession. Hell, some of the smartest people around are bad writers.

What needs to be pointed out is the fact that there are SO many ways to be a bad writer. The biggest is assuming a large vocabulary always indicates both intelligence and ability. This works multiple ways. People see the vocab. and assume “wow, good writer”, they can see it as overcompensating for lack of substance, the list goes on.

Another common problem is losing focus (or going about the topic in a weird attempt to stand out (which usually fails(but not always(you have no ideas how much I enjoy this)))). This is the most common among all reaches of essay, not just the people capable of using a thesaurus. The losing focus is a lot like the example given by Jaddua. Kid starts writing about something and completely forgets about the point of the essay. Pretty pictures taken of nothing basically. The other I mentioned is when people try to do something unconventional, but by doing so venture WAY off the path into the land of fancy ideas and pointless things. For example, I wrote about my desire to be (like) the Robin Hood of literature. However, I made it connect to the topic, I made it somewhat interesting, and I made sure it wasn’t utter nonsense. Is it what I would consider a major literary advancement for this century? No, but it’s an essay, not a dissertation. See? See how I’m venturing off the path? This is what those essays look like.

I apologize, I’m terribly bored and this topic grabbed my eye.

It’s okay to be skeptical, but not cynical. That statement could stand for all of what I said, but who needs short, potent statements when you can have lengthy and unnecessarily wordy post? That’s right, suck it Hemingway.