Tam writing this quick letter to introduce myself and tell you a bit about my accomplishments and aspirations as a writer. I won’t say that writing is in my blood or my genes or anything like that, but I will say that I do have an insatiable urge to write. I cannot say, but I definitely feel that writing is a passion of mine that I greatly enjoy. It is an urge that can only be satisfied and, even then, only temporarily, by stringing words together into a narrative. Ultimately, I greatly enjoy writing, although I do not consider myself to be stellar at it; I would call it a passion more than anything else.
My strengths are a writer derive from my enthusiasm for writing. I think that part of my abilities stem from my love for writing, because I actually want to hone my skills and perfect my craft. Were there a church where I could mount the pulpit and preach on my feelings about writing, I would be up there doing it. Thave said that this is something I must do, and it is true, but as the love you feel in your heart and your soul for what you are doing reflects in the quality of what you do.
Thus, a baker who kneads dough with love in his heart makes a far better loaf than one who dreads what he does, just as a plumber who loves plumbing does a much better job of fitting pipes than a plumber who would rather be writing poetry. When I sit at the keyboard of my word processor or grab a pen, through my fingertips I feel the creative essence flowing, becoming something tangible, something meaningful to the rest of the world.
Anyone who cares to pick it up and invest the time necessary to read it will, one hopes, get something of value from it and if one happens to touch that reader’s heart or soul, then the writer’s mission is ulfilled. These things are both my goals and my dreams, because I desire to have that impact through my writings. My weaknesses as a writer should already be apparent: I tend to become emotionally involved with my writing. I must learn to keep myself apart from it and to think of what I write as something apart from myself. It is not a child of mine, even if it is a creation of mine. While children are irreplaceable, that piece of writing will be replaced by another one in the future and more still after that.
I always want to go back and touch up this or that, make it read better, make its message more forceful…. whatever. And that is my other major weakness that I have been able to recognize: I cannot leave good enough alone and I must learn to understand when something is really and truly finished and any further work on it will detract from what is already there. On a more technical level, I also write like I speak, which means that many of my sentences run on or become tangled, because I have so much that I want to say and convey.
Proofreading has never been my favorite thing, so many of my writings get knocked for these problems. My best experience as a writer was when someone whom | had never before met sought me out and told me that what | wrote, something that wasn’t even intended for publication, and told me that I spoke to him in a way that no one else ever had. He was moved, informed and even inspired and that moment felt great. I never saw or spoke to that person again, but he left an indelible mark on me, as a person and as a writer.
My worst experiences are just getting things done sometimes: perhaps a deadline looms and the topic isn’t that interesting to me or I am just bogged down or maybe my use is not smiling on me at that moment. This can often feel like wading through a river of semicongealed Jell-O and I am sure you know well the feeling when it happens. Again, I mention that time when someone whom I had never before met complimented me on my writing. He had nothing to gain from so doing, but he felt compelled to do it because as| writer, I spoke to him, as a reader and he felt that what I wrote was truly meaningful to him and his situation.
That was the turning point in my career: before that I thought about being a writer but after that, I had to become a writer. The challenge is to measure up to that person’s expectations, to do it again and again and again, not so it becomes mechanical, but so people will actually wake up in the morning and look forward to reading whatever I have to say, whether it is about the price of popcorn or the more pressing issues of the day. In this class, I have three distinct goals. First, I want to work on my mastery of the basics as I continue striving to find my own voice.
This will help me to be technically proficient when eventually am able to hone my abilities more. Second, I want to develop that emotional detachment from what I do write, while still infusing the writing with emotion. Third, and finally, I want to know when I am gilding refined gold and painting the lily, as Shakespeare expressed it, and learn when to leave well enough alone. This will help me to be more effective and efficient as a writer, while also not harming the works that I previously created. I am looking forward to this class and I am looking forward to growing as a writer and an academic.
