We Welcome You to Our Writing Center!

It’s the beginning of the new school year. Young blood Freshmen are scurrying and shuffling through new buildings, and the hallways akin to labyrinths. Returning students are lugging their empty backpacks across campus, greeting a myriad of familiar and unfamiliar faces alike, readying themselves to leave their classrooms with countless syllabuses to skim the next coming weeks. And they’re all thinking the same thing nonetheless, “How am I possibly going to get all these writings done?!” Truth be told, not easily. But let me tell you that a writer’s best friends are their thoughts and their words; without those we wouldn’t have much else to work off of.

“How am I possibly going to get all these writings done?!” Truth be told, not easily.

That being said, welcome in, take a seat, and I’ll get us some tea before we begin.

Now, no good writing starts off as good writing. Writing is a process which can span many a late night laundry scribbles on receipt paper. All the same, writing can also take the more methodical route; you enter the library with Red Bull infused coffee, a 5 by 4 rubric sheet, 30 minutes to 5 hours of space, and a deadline to meet. We hope you’re not hitting the books with 30 minutes to spare, but we’re not ones to judge. What ever your process may be, that first writing is what we call the “Shitty First Draft.” That writing arrives from your thoughts, your emotions, and the connections you’ve made between your innate (and sometimes spontaneous) knowledge’s and experiences. It’s a shitty first draft not because it’s, well, shitty, but because it’s your first draft, and no one’s perfect.

It’s a shitty first draft not because it’s, well, shitty, but because it’s your first draft, and no one’s perfect.

“But I’m a bad writer, I wouldn’t even be able to pull a draft if I tried,” says the aggravated writer within all of us. “Um, no, you’re not,” but fine, let’s chat for a bit. What are you here for? Why did you decide to stop by? Tell me about yourself. What do you think about this assignment? Is it tough, easy, a pain to even bother? Oh, don’t mind me. I’m jolting down notes; by all means keep talking, I’m listening. Hey, by the way, these notes are your draft. You may not be the best at on-demand, on-the-spot, writing, but you speak very well and you articulate your ideas splendidly. That, in turn, can become your writing. If you ever find yourself with writer’s block, trying writing the way you speak. You will feel less constrained, and your writing becomes more authentic, more you.

If you ever find yourself with writer’s block, try writing the way you speak.

I’ll hand this back over to you; look over the ideas you came up with. I can see you taking many different routes — this here, or maybe even talking about this and expanding what you meant when you said this, or you can even blend these two ideas as they encompass what you tried saying here, and maybe you can omit this if you feel it unimportant or too repetitive. I’ll give you a few minutes to look this over while I get us some more tea.

Wonderful, you have words! Did you think you were done? Remember what I said about that shitty first draft — you may be feeling awesome, and you are, but lets see what we have now and where we are.

I see, very interesting and engaging title, this says a lot about where I think you’re going to go with your writing. And this introduction, very concise and to the point. I have a real sense on where you were going, nicely done!. Oh, but what do we have here? I see how you connected Point A to Point B, but now Point C, D, and E need a bit more polishing in order to develop a flow. No, no, I don’t mean scrap those parts, I think they are wonderfully written, but now we need to reorganize, rephrase, and oh, look how you elaborated on this example here? You did an excellent job, and I think if you continue applying this particular component to the rest of your writing you’re sure to do yourself a solid!

Oh, would you look at the time. Do you have any other questions about what we worked on today? You want to see if we can schedule another appointment? Definitely! Actually, hey, Friday is our walk-in day; why not stop back in then? You can have a few days to look over our notes from today and maybe we can work on getting what ever kinks are left over. You can try and catch me again if you’d like, but I assure you everyone here can help just as well all the same.

Alright! Awesome work today.

Thank you for stopping into our Writing Center. I wish you the best of luck with your writing piece. Good luck this semester. See you next time!