Last week when I was reading everyone’s blog post, I remember seeing Grace Carsello’s about going back through her old sketchbooks to see how her art has progressed. It was a super entertaining post, and it made me want to go back through my google drive to read my old writing instead of my sketchbook.
I started by looking at my sixth grade writing and noticed that I had at least five separate essays about one short story called the Charmer. I figured we could just read an essay about this short story and maybe another one and have a good laugh at it. In no way is it required for you to read the Charmer for you to understand what’s happening because it’s funny with or without context. It is, however, linked here.
First, I want to point out my title and font choices:
The title definitely describes what the reader will soon be reading and the font screams academic. Right off the bat, I transform the way we think about theme and structure by posing this idea: “In the beginning of the story, in the text because it says, ‘I no longer wake up each morning with a hard lump of anger pressing against my chest. It seems I’ve come full circle.’ This showsthat she used to be angry and now she has come around to be happy with her life.”
I think for this beginning phrase I just autocompleted a random sentence and “showsthat” is not a mistake when I retyped the quote, that was my final draft. Not to mention me just paraphrasing the quote to pass off as analysis.
By the time I get to my third paragraph of intense analysis, I start making some questionable choices. I say “Finally, the family is using their heads and learning that what they had let happen all of these years is not O.K. The father finally takes his time to realize what he was being told and realizes that Zackary should finally start owning up to his mistakes instead of running from them or swindling his family.” I like that I wrote O.K. instead of okay and also how I used a thesaurus and slipped the word “swindling” in there to make me sound smart.
Like every good writer, I wanted to use my conclusion paragraph to leave a lasting impression. I did this by writing one compelling, almost threatening, sentence; “Winnifred didn’t want to cause pain to her family, just like you would too”. Breaking the fourth wall is almost always the best decision when writing in any situation. Force the audience to agree with you.
Out of curiosity, I read another one of my essays about the Charmer. This one talked mainly about the main character, Zackary’s, personality. I noticed that once again, the craziest part about my essay was the conclusion. “Looking at all of the facts behind this, Zackary has bad morals because he is impulsive, he doesn’t take accountability for his actions, and he is manipulative. Zackary is rude, irrespossible and definetly has bad morals.” I think for the first sentence, I did an “O.K.” job of summarizing the main points of my essay, but in that second sentence, you could tell I was just writing to write. There was no new thought, only just synonyms for the words I had already used to describe Zackary. I sounded surprised by the fact that he definitely has bad morals even though his having bad morals was literally my claim. Also, I’ve never seen the words “irrespossible” or “definetly” before.
Now I want to talk about a short story I wrote about that I think you will know, “All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury. This is a middle school short story staple that I hope you all had the pleasure of reading. If not or you forgot what it was about, here is a plot diagram (not made by me).
very readable plot diagram
Anyway, I wrote about this in eighth grade and I could see some differences even from the first sentence. I say “Jealousy is like a gnawing animal, an unrelenting force driving anger and hatred”. I also introduced my quotes without saying “in the text it says” and never once used the word “evidence” in my essay. I don’t think this a bad way to start an eighth grade essay at all, it was interesting and talked about something other than the characters in the story and I learned some better techniques to use in this essay. I’m not here to brag though, so I have to point out this sentence I wrote in my first body paragraph: “A metaphor can add a lot of meaning to a story”. Not only am I painfully stating the obvious, the “metaphor” I was referring to was “her voice would be like a ghost”. By the time I was in eighth grade and wrote this, I was fourteen years old. I wasn’t an unaware 12-year-old and definitely thought I knew the difference between a simile and a metaphor. Google says you learn this difference in grades 3-6. Very unfortunate.
Hopefully, when I graduate college I’ll be able to recognize the progress I made in my writing by looking at my high school work. I would try to do it now, but it is still too recent to not be embarrassed about.
Lauren,
Similarly to your gained inspiration from Grace, you have now caused me to go into my google drive and investigate my old papers. But, I am going to do what you said you wouldn’t do: high school drive. I don’t know about you, but I have my drive organized pretty well. I do not understand how people keep it unorganized. You would never be able to go back into it and look at your old stuff. Anyways, I only have one paper in mind for investigation, and that is my Boy’s Life essay. Your sixth-grade writing reminded me of that essay, and all my essays freshman year for that matter. Right off the bat, the opening sentence is by Robert McCammon. It has nothing to do with what I say at all in the next sentence, let alone the entire essay. In the first paragraph, I include not one but 3 pieces of textual evidence, each with only 1 sentence of reasoning in between (the reasoning mainly entailed me repeating the piece of evidence in my own words). The second body paragraph was much the same. Similarly to your ending sentence, I ended my essay with a bigger picture. Although, I wouldn’t say I broke the third wall, merely pushed at it hard, almost to the point of penetration. I have decided to include my last sentence:
Everyone needs to live in their moment because life will take its toll on them. They need to bask in the glory of their childhood and have faith in their future.
What do you think? I know it’s really good. I hope you enjoyed reading this almost as much as I enjoyed reading yours. Maybe we can do this over zoom sometimes.
Hi, Lauren! I think it’s great that you found inspiration from others. I also read Grace’s blog and found it inspiring to keep up with your hobbies and interests. The vulnerability and humor you use throughout the novel is refreshing and makes this blog so much fun to read! I like how you start off noting your font and the sarcasm you use. I also experience the random switches in style. Sometimes I catch myself using slang or random lingo in one sentence and then use up 100% of my professional vocabulary in the next sentence following that. My middle school writing was most definitely atrocious. I know you’re making fun of your past writings, but my writings had little to no analysis with huge emphasis on sophistication. I, too, thought it was the most insane move to put the emphasis back on the reader by addressing them. The growth between your 6th grade and 8th grade writing is huge! Your professionalism truly shows with your usage of word choice and figurative language. Although there are definitely some critiques to be made about your writing, don’t forget to look back at the positive moments as well! Despite being embarrassed about the work that we’ve done throughout school, I think that it’s notable that we have learned and developed our writing at a deeper level which will definitely shine through when the time comes. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Lauren!
I really enjoyed reading this post! It’s so entertaining to see you acknowledge your strengths and weaknesses in writing at the time. You’re so brave for taking on the challenge of reading your essays from middle school; I genuinely don’t think I’d be able to take it. Despite some mistakes, your middle school essays seem really interesting, and if I were your teacher I would give you an A+ on all of them! I would’ve found the line “jealousy is like a gnawing animal, an unrelenting force driving anger and hatred” funny if it didn’t resemble my timed writings so much. I love how you described the quote where you seemed to be guilting your audience as “compelling” and “almost threatening”. Thank you very much for the plot summary of “All Summer in a Day,” it was very helpful and very readable. Writing is overall an incredibly embarrassing thing so I completely relate to you not wanting to read over recent essays. Every time I’d start writing a new college essay I was completely convinced I was an unrecognized writing prodigy with an incredible amount of raw talent, but when I’d read over it the next day it would be so bad and I would be so embarrassed. Overall, you’ve done a more than “O.K.” job with this post, and I look forward to reading more from you in the future!