Post 1: Am I A Good Writer?
Writing is not my strong suit. Growing up in school, I always excelled in STEM courses. I was the kind of student who never payed attention in my Calculus class, yet managed to ace every test I took. Math and science came naturally to me. I didn’t need to study, or go out of my way to understand the course material because I already found it to be easy. My english classes, however, were a completely different story.
I’ve always struggled to express myself through the use of words. As an eighteen year old girl living in the twenty-first century, this seems like a skill I should have mastered by now. We speak and write everyday, yet I still find myself struggling to practice these mundane forms of communication. I’m not eloquent, and I find it difficult to use complex sentence structures and lyrical language. It just doesn’t come naturally to me.
Considering all my struggles you would think that I would choose to study a subject with the least amount of writing. Well, think again! I’m studying Cinema and Media studies which is a major that requires an intense amount of film analysis typically through the form of essays. In the fall semester of 2021, every single one of finals was in the form of an essay. Lucky me!
Writing is something I haven’t been able to escape. I’ve been forced to face it time and time again. As time went on, I found myself experiencing a strange shift in my perspective on writing. I realized that it wasn’t the exposure of my thoughts and ideas that I dreaded when confronting an essay, but the way in which I was expected to communicate those concepts.
Throughout my time in school, I’ve been expected to write essays in an academic manner because it was considered “proper” and “right.” There was an expectation that the only way I was able to prove my intelligence was by exhibiting beautiful prose and using big words. This was a weakness of mine that I thought would hold me back in my academic career.
My roommate is a very talented writer. She is so talented that she even wrote an entire book in high school (go check out Confessions of an Adolescent by Kassydi Rone). Kassydi is so good at writing that even my parents asked me to have her proofread each of my essays before turning them in to my professors.
I remember one day I had a cinema paper due about the film Persepolis, and I asked her to proof read my essay before submitting it. Before handing her my paper, I warned her that “I’m a terrible writer” and that my essay was probably no good. After reading my essay, she turned to me and said that my perspective was very unique and that most people would have not noticed the details that I included in my analysis. When I argued with her claiming that my essay was not written in a lyrical format, she told me that that aspect of writing is not what makes a good writer. My words were easy for my readers to understand, and my ideas were communicated in a more efficient manner.
Essentially, the idea is that you don’t have to be a good writer to be a good writer. This probably sounds confusing when first reading it but let me explain. In Vershawn Ashanti Young’s “Should Writer’s Use They Own English?” he touches on the idea that writers shouldn’t be expected to write in the “standard language ideology.” They should be able to speak in their own dialects, and not be expected to stick to “academic” conventions.
When I realized that writing doesn’t have to be restricted to these expectations, I began to actually like writing. I became less worried about how my words sound, while focusing on the actual content of my discourse. I have so much to share and many ideas that I want to communicate and it’s easiest for me to do so in a space where I feel free to write how I feel.
After learning that breaking away for those academic expectations was acceptable, I began to actually enjoy writing. I realized that I have important things to share with the world, and that I shouldn’t hold myself back because of the doubts instilled in my mind. The removal of those conventions creates a space in which writers feel free to express themselves in ways more authentic to their identity. Not only does this benefit the writer, but it also gives the readers a better understanding of who the author actually is. This is something I try to keep in mind while writing, as I attempt to apply this new perspective to my work. I try to remember that writing is more than just words on paper, but power and voice behind them.
