By next Wednesday, April 4, post a paragraph on your greatest weakness as a writer. Don't worry about exposing yourself in public. To show you my good will on this topic, I will expose my greatest weakness: I write too much. My first drafts are scatterbrained, 2,000-word attempts to produce 650 words of prose. I spends hours/ days trying to cut down and refine the mess into something that resembles a persuasive and powerful essay. I'm never sure whether all that labor is successful.
So what's your weakness? Procrastination? Bad grammar? Ineffective use of secondary sources as evidence? Weak vocabulary? Ineffective academic tone?
BTW, in case you think this assignment is too negative in its tone, the next blog assignment will be to identify your greatest strength as a writer.
I've been writing seriously for 40 years. I am still unsatisfied with the results. How about you?
My greatest weaknesses as a writer are procrastination and weak downshifting. While procrastination can easily be fixed, downshifting will take much more effort. When I write, I write like I speak. This effects the tone of my writing, and the order of my writing. I understand the concepts of downshifting perfectly, but still have trouble completing thoughts in a coherent order. Once I can learn to organize my thoughts, in a concise and clear way, then I will be happy with my writing.
ReplyDeleteI feel that two of my greatest weaknesses as a writer are integrating sources and organization in my papers. Integrating sources into papers is a very important skill to learn, without it people are likely to not take your writing seriously. For me in past writing, my sources have either been at a minimum, or take over my own writing. My second problem is working my ideas, with their sources, into a coherent paper. Most of the time when I am writing my papers, there is no organization or coherent flow. It isn’t until the very end when I can gather my ideas and form a working paper. With extra effort these are two relatively easy problems to fix.
ReplyDeleteProcrastination is my greatest weakness as a writer. This weakness causes the greatest problem in my writing which is under-developed ideas. Procrastination robs me of the time to find and include necessary details. As a result, my paragraphs can tend to be short and too direct. Although this can make my paragraphs concise, the missed details weaken otherwise good ideas. Specifically, lack of attention to detail is a weakness that causes these missed details and therefore under-developed ideas. I often overlook details in the rush to finish a paper. Again, this rush weakens my papers by making the ideas less intricate and more basic.
ReplyDeleteMy greatest weakness as a writer is my inability to remain clear throughout the piece. This causes my writing to become unclear and very messy. I forget to downshift and tend to repeat myself frequently. As a result, I never fully develop my arguments. I also make careless mistakes because of this. If I proof read my papers more often, I would notice that I am repeating myself. This makes my writing a lot worse than it should be.
ReplyDeleteMy two greatest weaknesses as a writer are using too many expletives and not providing examples as evidence when making an argument. Using expletives results in a weak tone which ends up being boring instead of strong and persuasive. I can fix this problem by constantly using the "Paramedic Method" until it becomes habit. My other problem, not providing examples, makes for a less appealing argument that lacks credibility. Providing real life examples will make my writing much more persuasive.
ReplyDeleteMy greatest weakness as a writer is twofold that both add up to writing too much for the assignment most of the time. Although, I struggle with outlining major topics for my paragraphs and end up needing to reorganize or even restart my essay once I start writing it soon becomes more written words than I am allotted. The first part of my weakness is that I write overly confusing and complex sentences. I often write sentences that can end up 4 or 5 lines long with multiple ands, multiple becauses and too many commas that are all attempting to construe too many ideas in one sentence. I also have difficulty understanding when to specifically use commas, should they go after pauses in speech, should they only go when used for specific things such as ‘and’ sentence connectors, lists, or specific phrases such as appositive phrases. In any case the bigger issue is that my sentences often to contain too many ideas and thus contain too many commas or sentence connectors. I often need to read and revise carefully searching for lengthy sentences. And even if a sentence is short it can still end up making no sense because I have tried to use overly flowery language. Furthermore, I almost always go over the length limit or write one of the longest essays if a limit is not assigned. When I go over the limit, I struggle to pick and choose what should be kept and what is repetition of a previous idea. I always want to keep most of my sentences and fancy words because they sound cool and I remember structuring them a specific way in order to get the idea across. But the extra pizazz is often unnecessary especially when I need to get a paper down in length from 4 pages to 3 pages. On the whole, my problem is I simply write too much often by unnecessarily restating myself as my writing becomes more of a stream of consciousness. Thus, my writing is messy and needlessly complex which leads to my paper being too long.
ReplyDeleteMy greatest weakness as a writer is I take too long to get to the main point of a paper. Too often I go on and on with vocabulary, unnecessary words, useless points and I deviate from what I am supposed to say in my paper. I need to work on cutting out the useless points of my essays by focusing from the start to the finish on the essay’s thesis and making sure to defend and develop that thesis with useful remarks.
ReplyDeleteMy greatest weakness as a writer is procrastination. Throughout the years, this habit has gotten worse and worse. Now it is at the point where instead of completing assignments at the last minute, I end up completing them after they are due. This stresses me out greatly and produces poor work. If I would spend less time dreading the assignment, and more time putting effort into it, I believe that i could easily produce "A" papers.
ReplyDeleteMy sophomore research paper on William Blake was late. My junior research paper on welfare reform was late. My senior research paper on the Black Plague was also turned in late. Clearly procrastination is my biggest weakness.I have never been able to break, what seems to be, the worst habit one could have. I'm that person you've stated millions of times in class who is "under the illusion of writing papers better at the last minute." I don't even believe it anymore, yet I still continue to put stress upon myself and wait. What also contributes to my procrastination is my lack of focus, or if I am focused, I take way too long to think up sentences that sound good.
ReplyDeleteOne of my main weaknesses as a writer is that I can only write in one way, all my writings sound the same. I cannot seem to change my tone, I'm not sure if i perfectly understand what it means to write in 'third person' or 'first person'. I do understand it a little, but I don't really give it much importance. I did not read that much growing up so I was always told that I will be a bad writer since I do not read, so its almost like I have accepted that I am not a good writer just because I did not read that much growing up.
ReplyDeleteI have never really used sources or done the whole 'citing' thing which I am eager to finally understand after this research paper. The library sessions did help me though. Sometimes I cannot find the write words to deliver exactly what I am trying to say. Sometimes I have so many ways to say something I am not sure which one to choose. I feel i write very informally sometimes as if I am talking to someone. I think what I mainly need is a lot more writing experience that will just make a a decent writer, I don't plan on being a great writer as it's never been my area of expertise.
My greatest weakness as a writer is trying to put too many thoughts or ideas into one sentence. I need to work on editing my drafts many times so that I do not make sentences that are too long. I also need to work on not procrastinating and making multiple drafts before the assignment is due. Overall if I edit more frequently and I work on my sentence structure I will be able to improve my writing.
ReplyDeleteMy greatness weakness as a writer is that I write in too much of a logos way. I generally make arguments that are made up of logic and statistics (logos.) I need to work on presenting arguments with transitions with pathos, that will include figurative language and more interest to the reader. Overall, each argument should be part logos, ethos and pathos.
ReplyDeleteMy greatest weakness as a writer is waiting so long to get started. I try really hard not to, and when I get a new writing assignment I tell myself I will start working on it right away, but I never do. I always make silly mistakes on my papers that can easily be avoided by giving myself time to edit and revise.
ReplyDelete