A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-Four-Hundred-And-Sixty-Seven

I began working on a new prose piece today, a piece about pop-culture that I expect to be somewhat short,  It might be that I can find a good place to sell it, actually, as I think it is about a popular subject.  I have tried working on this piece before, actually, and had a lot of trouble getting it to work.  The last time, I kind of tried to work my way in, but this time I just started out by stating a general version of my thesis in a more direct and bold way.  In truth, I know that is probably the best way to start any writing project of this sort, but it is easy to forget that when doing the work.  When I was an undergraduate I had the fortune of working with a professor named Ilja Wachs who was a legend at Sarah Lawrence, where I went to college.  Shortly after I handed in my first paper, he sat me down in his office and looked at me and said, "Will, I know you can write, and I know you can think, but you know too much about how to write an essay.  Next time, don't write me an introduction or a conclusion, just write the damned essay."  The truth is, I had spent many years learning all these different ways to organize a piece of writing, and had been taught to build up a thesis and all these other things, and I had reached a point where they didn't really serve me any longer.  Enough understanding of the purpose of writing an essay had already seeped in that I didn't need any of that other guidance, I had an understanding of what I was doing, and by letting go of everything and just writing out what I thought without worrying about the formal introduction and conclusion, I was free to learn to really write an essay.  A big part of that process, though, is just being direct with what you are doing (at least not in a first draft).  I am not entirely certain why it is I need to remind myself of that so often.

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