Complex Numbers

Essay It Ain't So

https://www.thoughtco.com/write-the-perfect-personal-essay-3858745

The assignment is really quite easy, it's about you after all, so this is your opportunity to shine!

The darkness does not shine. The darkness broods. And maybe smoulders a little bit, but mostly broods.

I always hated writing essays. Probably that's why I went into engineering instead of pursuing a liberal arts degree. No... wait... that was the money.

1. Understand the Composition of an Essay

The five-paragraph essay form was the bane of my high school existence. Well, that and jocks. Well, mostly jocks, but also the five-paragraph essay form. It was especially bad when I had to write one in Latin. Semper ubi sub ubi, et non illegitimati carborundum.


2. Find Inspiration and Ideas

Ever see one of those "how to draw" sketches? Like, "How to draw a puppy."
1. Draw an oval for the body.
2. Draw a smaller oval for the head.
3. Fill in the minor details to make it look like a puppy.

That's what I think of whenever someone urges me to "find inspiration." Like it's that easy. I can't draw worth a damn, so I get stuck on Step 3 and it ends up looking like a Jackson Pollock puppy. I can write well enough, I think, but... "Find inspiration and ideas." Yeah... right. You know what I noticed today? My deck is covered with leaves. I can either let them sit there, or I can rake or blow them off. If I let them sit there, eventually a wind will come by and remove them, or they'll rot away. If I remove them, more will take their place and I'll have to repeat the chore; it's still fall.

That's the extent of my inspiration and ideas for today: justification for being lazy.

(As an aside, it's both heartening and disheartening that this section of the linked article recommends doing something I've been doing for a while, the "core dump" I outlined two entries ago. Heartening because someone else thinks it's a good idea. Disheartening because it was MY IDEA DAMMIT.)


3. Freshen up Your Grammar

My grammars are dead, you MONSTER. Oh, wait, that kind of grammar. Well, that's always been pretty easy for me. That and spelling. This is despite my predilection for incomplete sentences in blog entries, which, in my defense, I know I'm doing; I use them in an attempt to strike a conversational tone.

Several years back, I heard a teacher - an actual, real-life, primary school teacher - say that she doesn't teach spelling or grammar, because "spelling and grammar checkers will take care of any mistakes." No wonder so many people can't tell the difference between "its" and "it's," or "there," "their," and "they're." Fuck off, teacher - spelling and grammar checkers still don't catch those kind of errors, and now they're ubiquitous. The errors, I mean. Not checkers. Damn pronouns and their ambiguous antecedents.


4. Use Your Own Voice and Vocabulary

No, this is a really bad idea. Well, they're right about active vs. passive voice, but to me one of the great things about writing is being able to stretch one's vocabulary, learn new words, and figure out new ways to use old words.

You know what I haven't used for 30 years or more? A thesaurus, that's what. I don't even know any synonyms for thesaurus. Unfortunately, this shows in my writing. My weakness isn't spelling, grammar, or punctuation (though I know those are not perfect), but repeated words in my first drafts. They're hard for me to catch, since I wrote them in the first place. Since I suck at editing, they tend to stay there.


5. Be Specific with Your Descriptions

This... well, this is actually good advice for writing anything.


6. Be Consistent with Your Point of View and Tense

So is this. Goddammit, get back to stupid shit so I can snark on you.


7. Edit, Edit, Edit

Ah, that's better. There is such a thing as overediting, you know. Even if my spell checker doesn't recognize the word "overediting." Anyway, I'm not one to give editing advice. But I know an ad for EssayEdge when I see one, and this is an ad for EssayEdge. Seriously, does everything have to be a freaking commercial?


8. Read

And if you've gotten this far, a) congratulations and b) you already know to do this.


Fortunately, blogging is usually utterly distinct from the personal essay format, at least for me. Here, I'm just trying to make jokes and a point. I'm not trying to sell myself or prove how clever I am (though, to be fair, I am rather clever - at anything except selling myself). If people like it, great; I appreciate that. If not, oh well - I can't please everyone and I quit trying a while back. In any case, I'm fine with improving my skills and learning new ones, but if I'm forced to write in a certain format, it feels like work.

And I'm allergic to work.

Now, to get back to brooding...