Writing about Writing Skills - Essay Example

Writing about My Writing Any piece of writing it is said may only be considered best when readers spoke enthusiastically of a written piece because it immediately captured their attention, support and recollections. DiAntonio and Power (2007) seem to agree, and note that the reasons the readers sit down and spend time reading a book, a newspaper or essay may be attributed in the way that the written text captured the essentials in choosing a topic or theme, writing a good beginning, middle and end, and implementing style. Thus, although some essential rules and guidelines in writing apply, however, there is a strategic process in writing effectively . This paper then will determine what good writing is, what techniques to follow, and which subject to choose through at least four examples of this writer’s written works. In this effort, example works that implements the best practices in clear and effective writing will be compared and contrasted to explore the process in writing engaging and creative piece of art. Approaches to good and strategic writing Good writing has been described and explained in myriad ways. Beside the technical and stylistic approaches, a writing can be judged good when it meets the following qualities: 1) Honest. Writing must address the writer’s subject without pretense or false sensationalism; 2) Fresh. Clichés are avoided by writer – or he or she thought through clichés so that they were presented newly minted. In other words, the writer avoids writing of superficial observations and pat solutions; 3) Sensitive. The values of the writer is revealed here because even though the writer’s subject for his essay is about his own life, he showed awareness of the rest of the world; and, 4) Alive. It is also important that the writer actively engaged with his subject, making the reader then engaged with the essay. These are just examples on how good writing may be determined, and there still exist so many ways to determine good writing. In Writing to Make Things Happen, Linda Flower state that writing may be likened to a mental three-ring circus as it entails the following: generating idea, making associations, throwing up trial sentences, evaluating, diagnosing, and guiding one’s own process (32). Moreover, before any good writing turns good, writers often face some problems which often begins in beginning to write to how the subject chosen can be written elegantly and clearly however. These problem or dilemma about starting to writing is often related to how one tackle the task and as Flower notes such may be resolved by adopting some techniques, and among them is being conscious of one’s composing process and strategies to use that will give the writer the will power to guide, test, and alter his own problem-solving process [40]. Better-written essays and my essays, compared Four essays submitted for inspection belong to varying types of writing: personal or autobiographical, fictional and descriptive. The first one belong to the personal type of essay, titled “Our Motorcycle”. This talks about lessons learned after the loss of a well-loved motorcycle by this writer and his friend. Written in a light, prose-like tone, the essay aims at sharing the joys experienced once a wish came true – that is, to own motorcycle, but the pains of losing it again, then the lessons learned from experience. The problems evident in this essay can be easily seen in the way this writer composes the subject. Although this belong to the personal type of essays, the writer can still make his essay interesting to outsiders or those who may not have experienced the problems encountered by the characters in this piece. In this kind of essay, it can also help provide the readers something to relate to and imagine themselves should the writer use details in writing descriptions of place, emotions, and experience. On the second essay, titled “Hybrid Car”, this writer attempted at enlightening readers about the advantages and long-term benefits in the environment of the adoption of electric cars as against the more popular, fossil fuel powered vehicles. The essay suffers from a poor beginning because an interesting opening is necessary to attract readers to read and stay until the last word of the essay. The use of grammatical devices to highlight the pros and cons, advantages and disadvantages of using the proposed electric-powered vehicles were also not properly carried out. This essay is the kind which aims at influencing and convincing readers to shift or reconsider his thinking about the kind of vehicle that may be more beneficial not only to one’s use but for the environment, but a poorly-supported research will hardly hold. In the article, Highlights of the Panamera’s Development, the approach in writing is simply a retelling of an interview conducted with the design director of Porche’s Panamera, Michael Mauer. It is evident from the beginning of the article how the writer aims to capture the attention of busy people in the way the lead or beginning paragraph was written – a summary of what the interview is all about. When compared to “Hybrid Cars” the style used by the author was effective in providing readers insights about the process of designing a new Porsche model Each paragraph is chunked concisely and to the point the highlights of quotes gathered from the interview, as if not wasting any word from start to finish. Titled Jingyi Duan, the third of the essays that this writer wrote is a fictional account of this person named as Jingyi, a young Chinese immigrant in the United States who loves anything but American cars. His fascination with cars soon turned him into an otaku, a kind of Japanese subculture that practices hermitic lifestyle at home. Later on in Jingyi’s life, he stopped being an otaku but to this day continues to be fascinated by cars. Like the other problems determined from the first two essays, this one has a problem with opening. The opening must be striking, catchy and interesting so that readers will stay reading the whole piece. Beside some grammatical lapses, the essay will benefit from details and information gathered from a more extensive research. Last and fourth, the essay “A Comparison of Hayagriva and Chakrasamvara,” talks about a set of different kinds of buddhist deities being worshipped by Hindu believers that was mounted by North Simon Museum. The style of writing was more academically-presented and although in the opening, this writer attempted to strike a contrast on the kinds of buddha that people are familiar with to make the first paragraph interesting and engaging. This one quite achieved the merits of a good opening. When compared to Joseph Giovannini’s “Old Masters in Plaster”, this essay may have used the rich repository of vocabulary and details to enable the readers imagine what it can not see at personally. In Giovannini’s elegantly written yet extensive discussion of the Carnegie Museum of Art’s over-100 plaster casts collections, there is also an effective use of structure, that from beginning to end, the whole subject was like wrapped around coherently as one. Is there a secret to writing effective and clear piece? Yes and no. The secret is that there is no secret at all. Today, there are volumes and volumes of books, how-to and help-books in writing, saying and talking of almost the same things about the approaches, the styles and forms in writing: that the secret to good writing is by writing. But writing must be approached with an awareness of the strategies and processes to come up with an effective and interesting work. Works Cited Flower, Linda. Problem Solving Strategies for Writer. New York. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981. Print. Giovannini, Joseph. “Old Masters in Plaster.” Architecture Magazine Nov. 2007: 69-71. Print. “Interview With Michael Mauer Porsche Director of Design: Highlights of the Panamera's Development.” Car Styling Nov. 2009. Print. Power, Helen & DiAntonio, Robert. The Admissions Essay. Secausus, NJ. Lyle Stuart Publishing, 1987. Print. Read More