This morning, I headed over to the library to begin my first day of writing. It was exhausting, to be sure, writing for such a long span of time, but it helped to think that this is only the rough draft. Sometimes I would obsess over small pieces of the writing when I should have been focusing on the big picture. After all, I will spend the two weeks after this week refining my essay. For now, I just need to get the main ideas down. I need to keep this in mind so that I will not waste time in the future. I hope that I can leave the OCD piece of me while I write these rough drafts.
I've also learned that rough drafts are not complete products. For example, I wanted to write a lot more today and expand on certain ideas, but instead I just wrote down my ideas and decided that I would examine them in the next draft. It is difficult for me to do this, but I need to realize the time constraint.
I completed one rough draft today, which was exactly what I wanted to accomplish, so I'd say I'm on the right track so far. As exhausting and scary as it is, I find the excitement of writing is taking over. I do love investing myself intellectually in an idea long enough to write a piece about it, and now I have a whole day to devote to each idea. It's wonderful, and the pure thrill of it is starting to conquer any anxieties I have.
An excerpt of my work today on "The Church":
"After I learned every child-appropriate story in the Bible, I stayed with my parents upstairs in the big white room where our pastor gave sermons that I usually understood, which my parents considered impressive. Sometimes, though, my mind would wander toward the long stained-glass mosaic windows as I watched the light that shone through them move with the sun, and sometimes, I would study the ceiling, which was made up entirely of little white bumps that seemed to have no pattern in size or arrangement. I often wished that we would sit in the balcony behind us to see the sermon from above. Once we did sit in the balcony, and I found it to be a disengaging and dull experience, since our pastor didn’t even look at us, and I experienced a pale but incredibly visceral fear of falling off the balcony and disrupting the sermon with my death. I wondered vaguely if God felt bored or frightened as he watched us move through our lives."
Part of what I loved about participating in the National Writing Project last summer was the time and permission just to write. Our lives are so busy that we usually just don't have time. We wrote bunches of quick writes and drafts that we could play around with later, so pieces were always rolling around, expanding, and growing in my head. I can just imagine what fun you will have with this senior project! Thanks for sharing the process in your blog.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that will be great! Thanks for sharing.
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