I Never Did Like Pre-Writing

"Here's your essay you have an hour to do. And I strongly suggest you do an outline for this one," says every teacher that I've ever had, and will ever have. Usually, I ignore this advice and set out to writing. I will, however, inevitably find myself lost in thought as I try to come up with an intelligent response while attempting to remember all my claims. I used to think pre-writing and outlining a bore, something that was below me. I had no time to make a good outline, but if I didn't make one, either my grade would be negatively affected, or my paper wouldn't be too great (look at the evidence people, some of my papers aren't very well-written).

To me, pre-writing is win-lose/hit or miss situation. If it weren't for my legendary apathy to school issues and writing about if Suzy should wear a uniform or not in public school, writing papers in general would be easier. But I'm getting off topic. Pre-writing can be a win scenario: I get all my thoughts down on time, I can come up with a clean thesis, and fit in quite a few details here and there. But the lose scenario can be devastating: I lose track of time, have jumbled, meaningless thoughts on paper and nowhere to go with it (which happens, I'll admit, a lot). Perhaps it's my attention span that needs the work, who knows.

By no means should teachers just stop making kids pre-write to all their essays. Pre-writing is absolutely effective to the average kid. For the kids like me, I would encourage what Aaron Hamburger said; make an outline after your paper. You can fill in missing information and even everything out once you have completed your essay.

Not a bad idea. I might just do that from now on.    

The Road to Appreciating Life A Little Bit More

     To me, The Road is not simply child and father wandering about a dark, cold, wilderness that lacks both food and humanity. I see a life that the father took for granted, and a life the son will never have. Morbid as this sounds, it has helped me to appreciate my own position in life at the moment. And, to the disgust of some, I commented that every time I read this book, I have to eat. I don't find the violence and descriptions appetizing, I'm not an animal. But every time the father observes the thinness of his son (which is very frequently) I find it hard to say no to a half peanut butter sandwich, because I don't ever want to feel like the characters do in this book. I think that this is the most effective form of writing. Even if the style is a little sketchy, if the reader feels uncomfrotable or empathy for the characters, it's working. McCarthy does this very well in The Road.

     The writing style seemed to bother some people. McCarthy doesn't use the proper grammar we are all used to- apostrophes when necessary, for example -and this kind of irked me as well. However I want to open my mind to this book and any ideas it might provoke. What if this writing style is used to represent the non-existence of education anymore? The boy was born into this type of world, maybe he doesn't know about grammar. Maybe the writing style is more to convey a sense of hopelessness; it's simplistic and is written in a stream of conciousness format.

     I'm not sure. Even though I have read this book already, I'm still excited to get to the end.