end of week one post

Over my first week at FSU, I was assigned three readings all by different female writers with one thing in common, teaching people their views on how to write. Though each writer tried to convey the same message, they each had completely different ideas on how to produce a beautiful work of art. 

Anne Lammott's "Shitty First Drafts" was my personal favorite of the week. The meaning of the story is quite self-explanatory. You must write a sucky first draft to be successful with the rest. She says, "All good writers write them. This is how you end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts." I feel like I was able to relate to Anne Lammott more so than the other two writers because I felt as though she was having a polite and intelligent conversation with me. At some times she would make jokes, like when she mentioned that one writer that writes elegant first drafts that no one likes very much, and at other times she would be blatantly honest, like when she talks about how terrible her first drafts were. In a way, I feel as though if I would have read this and took Lammott's advice a year ago, I would have passed my Advanced Placement English Literature exam, and then I would not even have to be taking ENC1101.

The next reading that I was assigned was "How To Become Better Writer," by Lorrie Moore. Her story differed from the first in that the writer tells her audience to do extremely random descriptive things to become a better writer. For example she would go from, "Turn in a story about driving with your Uncle Gordon and another one about two old people who are accidentally electrocuted when they go turn on a badly wired desk lamp," to telling you to, " Make up anagrams of his old girlfriend's name and name all of your socially handicapped characters with them." This story is surely composed of random streams of consciousness. Like the previous story, I like how the writer has a discussion with her audience, but when I finished reading it, I do not think I learned "How To Become A Writer."

The final reading of the week was "The Watcher at the Gates," written by Gail Godwin. It seemed to be completely different than the rest. In this story the writer tells her audience about a watcher who checks up on all of her writings. She says the watcher is "dedicated to one goal: rejecting too soon and discriminating too severely." To be completely honest, I have no clue how this "watcher" is supposed to help me improve my writing, but Godwin ends the story telling us that this watcher ultimately does not want us to fail. :)