So, here’s the deal. I like writing. Realistically, I like any form of creative self expression but that’s not the point of this post.
I like writing, and there totally has been points in my life where I loved writing.
And I am good writer. I am a strong writer.
And in all fairness at 19 years old I am an award wining published, writer.
But I am not a perfect writer. I don’t know all the rules of punctuation or grammar and spell checker and I are best friends.
My philosophy is that what I am trying to say matters more, then if it could be use as an example of flawless grammar. I also spent three years of of my high school education doing nearly exclusively timed writing exercises. Which. mainly taught me that what you get down on paper, good, bad or ugly matters more than what you planned on writing.
Not everyone shares my thoughts on writing.
I know that there’s generally going to be comments on every essay about commas, and spelling, and word choice, and sentence structure. Not that big of a deal, that’s constructive criticism.
But then there’s peer reviews.
I have never gotten a peer review back and went “Wow this is really great and useful advice! ” Most of the time is like something along the lines of “This is good, but it could be better, good work”. But then there was my most recent essay.
This essay was a part of the snowball of a minor disaster that was this class, and the entirety of last semester. (Read, a lot of it was written during times of the day when I should have been sleeping) I knew that the essay I turned in for peer review was not going to win a Pulitzer. But I knew it had good bones,
It also apparently had terrible grammar and spelling. It sucked to peer reviews back that focused solely on that, and didn’t even tell me what was good about the essay.
I knew it wasn’t flawless. I a human wrote it. When, I a human should have been sleeping. I didn’t really read over it. i didn’t run it through eighteen spell checkers. I just sent it off.
It’s been a month now and clearly, I am still low key salty. I am to a point where I can kind of laugh some things off. Why did both my peer reviewers suggest I go tutoring, when the class tutoring programmers repeatedly state they are not there from grammar and spelling? Maybe sir, you can’t start sentence with “But, And, Which,” but some of us who are stronger writers with style can.
That being said, its still a little raw. I keep catching myself on how many times I start sentences with and or but. Totally something that can be cut down on. Variety is important, but so is about getting it all out there.
It really has been a theme of the past year or so. That things don’t have to be to be perfect, to be award wining…
