A Self-Reflection on My Writing
Writing is easy to get into but it is a skill that is hard to master. I thought I was in the better end of the spectrum of student writers until I took Cyrus Saatzas’ course on Writing for Print, Electronic and Online Media.
It was in this course that I discovered my criminal love affair for serial commas and for writing unnecessary long paragraphs, among other sins.
If the point could be conveyed in one sentence, I was wont to make it longer by enumerating exactly three things, adding superfluous adjectives and attaching an em dash to the last item — much like everything wrong in this paragraph. In short, I write with too much fluff.
I also struggled with subjectivity, so much so that points were docked down for the same error in the span of two paragraphs. All these errors stemmed from writing in an alternative style that I was not comfortable with — the style used for focus stories.
However, these mistakes happened not because I was unfamiliar with the writing style but because I could not write in a succinct manner that would have enabled me to tell a story in a different way while still conveying the main point across. Too much fluff and subjectivity were flaws I already knew about my writing and struggled with but it was the error of how many sentences should be in a paragraph with or without attribution that I never knew about before going into this course.
Evidently, the interview assignment was the hardest writing I had to submit considering that it also had to be peer-reviewed by the person I interviewed. I made a lot of errors and was not proud of my work, but the grade I acquired did not sum up my whole experience in this course.
I discovered elements of writing that I was good at such as the AP writing style, the Inverted Pyramid technique and writing leads. These are the skills I think I cultivated throughout this course by consulting the AP Style Guidebook, reading news articles by different organizations and writing often.
I came into the course expecting it to be a breeze, but after having gone through the whole semester I realized the power in each sentence construction and even in the positions of each paragraph. Writing should be more purposeful and mine was not.
All these experiences culminated into a grade that I was happy with for my final assignment, the style I enjoyed the most writing —public relations and advertising.
Even though I have improved from writing too much fluff and inserting too many commas, I will continue to read news articles from reputable sources and dissecting each lead. I will keep on writing because it is an unforgiving skill when neglected. I will make it a point to always proofread and screen for bias in my word choices. It may be painful to look back on my mistakes and dissect the errors of my writing, but self-reflection is an underrated tool that motivates me to write better. It shows me how far I have come in my progress and how far I still need to go.
