Paul Beltman
December 11, 1990
This was my hardest essay, mostly because I broke my most important rule : Never write what I think the teacher wants, but what I want. I went through two revisions, before I realized that I really didn't like the essay as it was. I completely revised it, practically starting over, and I was very pleased with the transformation. The final copy seemed to be more like my work.
I liked this essay a lot. It was difficult to write because it was emotionally draining. I wrote about a subject that bothered me a lot, and I write best when I have a strong feeling about the issue. Writing this essay helped me to deal with it a little.
This essay gave me some problems, mostly because I couldn't think of anybody I could describe. I came up with Charlie Brown, and it was a challenge to do this convincingly. He is, after all, a cartoon character and you don't get to meet them in real life very often. I think may be one of my weakest essays because it is hard to describe someone who is largely black and white.
The title is an inside joke, because it is written in the standard TURBO Pascal language syntax for IF-THEN statements. This was a fun essay to write. I chose Tom Wolfe to imitate, because I was impressed by his style. I tried to achieve his ability to take a subject and present it in an intimate, personal tone that conveyed feelings as well as facts. This essay is entirely in fun, but there is a subtle point in there if you look for it. You could see it as a warning that we have to be careful of the potential problems of living in a computer dominated society. You don't have to look for deep cosmic revelations if you don't want to, however, and just have fun with it.
My biggest worry about this essay is that I may be getting too wordy and deep. Too wordy in the part where I talked about White's essay, and too deep in the part where I explored my reaction to it. I think it works because a journal response is more than just describing the essay, it deals with my reactions to it.
So how did I grow as a writer? This is difficult for me to get an objective view on, but I think I learned some good stuff in this class. The most important thing was that I reaffirmed my desire to write. I learned to clean up my style instead of letting my desire to describe run away with me. I especially learned to look at other writers and their style of writing rather than just the content. Style can tell you about the author just as much as content can. Perhaps the biggest thing I learned was how to look at my own writing more critically, because this has always been a difficult thing for me to do.
I'm going to need to work at looking at my work more objectively, and understanding how the reader would approach my writing. I also have to make sure that my writing is clearer and more concise. Complexity should not be confused with subtlety.
The one thing I want to remember, though, is that I must never write anything the way I think someone else wants to see it. I want to always write what I want to see. Writing is an intensely personal experience for me, and I don't want to diminish it simply to please some one else.