You are what you Write

I loved that Graves finally stated the obvious, “a writer must find his or her own subject.” It has to “possess” them. (115). So true. Figure, do we write our best when we are forced to write about something that we have no connection with? Absolutely not. We have to embrace our “wanted” topic and make it our baby. The same thing for students. As teachers, you have to find topics that are going to be interesting, making them personal for students. Teachers need to allow students to feel uninhibited, free from judgement.

Rex said something similar in that we write our best when we write from what we know and have experienced already. Writing from our “gut” (118). So true as well. I have found that my best writing has been about the death of my father. I am able to draw such emotion into the writing that I am not able to vocalize otherwise. For me, that is the reason I write. It acts as a healer and a release. For me, this type of writing is error free. Only I know how it happened and the emotions I felt.

Murray feels that our writing begins with alone thought. Giving students the time to come up with topics, alone and on their own, will probably yield a better paper. He feels that teachers need to embrace day dreamers instead of discouraging them. I am not so sure I agree with this aspect. As a young student that never felt like doing work, I could see myself exploiting this to get out of work. “But I have to stare out the window in order to discover what I want to write about.” Thought words would probably fly out of my mouth.

I am not even going to lie, but I did not find anything too exciting in Suhor’s section. I feel he just regurgitated everything the previous three already said. Actually in reading his section I felt a lot like Graves when he was listing to the man speak about sea turtles. I had felt I missed something big and probably did.