Week One Reflection

It’s true that hands-on experience teaches more than theory or discussion ever could. By spending a week writing rough drafts for a collection of essays, I have had my endurance and writer’s vision tested, and I have learned about how to meet these challenges effectively as a writer.

The first challenge I met was against my endurance. I am a person who likes to finish pieces in one sitting, completely intellectually investing myself in an idea for a few hours and then leaving it. When I wrote my play, I literally sat down, opened my computer, and wrote it without taking a single break. Writing this collection of rough drafts over the span of a week has been challenging for me because not only do I have to stop from writing each individual essay so I can take my lunch break, but I also have to stop from writing the entire piece each day as I head home and then start again the next morning. At the beginning, I felt like this manner of writing broke my concentration, but there was no way that I could sit down and simply write the entire collection of essays in one sitting. I’ve actually learned that by allowing my mind respite, I come back to the piece mentally rejuvenated, and while I may not be in the same mindset that I was before, returning to the piece several times gives it more texture. Breaking my concentration doesn’t ruin the mood of the piece as I thought it did; returning to a piece to re-write, revise, or continue gives it a deeper character, making for a more interesting and vibrant piece.

I also faced the test of writer’s vision, being able to see the whole collection while focusing on a part of it. When I began, I felt overwhelmed, wondering how I could write a whole book of individual essays that made sense together as one. As I wrote the second piece, however, the connections between it and the first piece seemed to come naturally because the first piece was kept in my mind while I wrote the second. And with the third piece, connections formed between the first and second. By the time I began the fourth essay, I understood what my collection was about, what fundamental feature bounded them all together. They all characterize my personal development as a human being from different angles. Because I had kept the previous essays in mind while I was writing each essay, because I opened my vision to include both the essay I was writing and its companions, I was able to form them as a whole. It is important, when writing a longer piece, to be able to look closely at what I am doing while focusing on how that will fit into the whole. This takes practice -- the kind of practice I am receiving through this exercise.

I have read books on how to write a longer work, but I never have written a long piece before. This week has taught me about endurance and vision through experience, and now I know how to achieve these qualities as I continue to write throughout my life.