Monday

I wrote this entry for yesterday but forgot to post it. Here it is now:

Today, I achieved two major accomplishments.

First, I added a lot of content to the playground essay. It is currently my largest essay at 11 pages, and I still haven't finished the ending. When I discovered this, I was confused, because the classroom essay, which discusses a subject much more important to my development, was only six pages. I thought I had done something wrong.

My second accomplishment was that I brought both of the essays, as well as the car essay, to my sponsor Mrs. Lemeris this afternoon. I felt like there was a huge amount of progress made with specific factors of my writing like diction and syntax. I also felt like she gave me some important ideas to consider when approaching revision. The most important of these is that these essays are supposed to chronicle my development into the person I am now, so I need to show where this process led, because that's the whole point of the essay. I need to refocus the essays so that they lead to the end result and so that the rest of the essay reflects the ending throughout. The ending can't just be where the piece stops; it needs to be an answer to the rest of the piece.

Interestingly enough, Mrs. Lemeris also said that the classroom essay was the essay that was closest to achieving this goal, and I personally think that the playground essay, after I have added an ending, will be just as focused as the classroom essay. The pieces I was worried about are the ones that are the most finished. This goes to show that length does nothing to indicate quality and has little significance. The classroom essay can be more important than the playground essay even if the playground essay is longer. I need to just make a piece as long as it needs to be.