Blog #6

Of the resources listed, the one I found most useful was The Adventurous Writer. This particular blog was incredibly helpful to me because I found the tips to be incredibly straight-forward, as well as tips I haven't heard before. For example, some of the other blogs had tips on them that I've definitely heard before, and that I feel are very elementry when it comes to writing. Personally, I found JProf to be uninteresting and straightforward; very little new information was presented on it. The LifeHack blog I found to be more interesting, but once again, the editting tips were all pretty basic, and I'd heard most of the before.

However, The Adventurous Writer only had six tips on them, and all of them were useful. I personally especially enjoyed the tip to use the "find" button in Microsoft Word to find phrases like "to be" and "there is" and other dull phrases, and otherwise reword them. I always think I catch phrases like that, but I'm sure there are still some that I just never notice, and therefore never revise. I never thought to specifically look for the words or phrases.

I also loved the tips "trust the writing process" and "let your writing go". I try so hard to do these things, but I still find myself re-reading stuff I've written and getting discouraged when the first draft I write isn't as good as I expect it to be. Trusting the writing process, and just letting the "stream of consciousness" writing flow out would really help me break out of a monotonous writing style. Letting your writing go is also important. My English professor once told me to "kill your babies", meaning delete a ton of your writing. Don't get attached. I, however, seem to think that everything I write is either inherently brilliant, or can be reworked to be brilliant. I need to do both of these things together; free-writing, and then deleting what sucks. If I do, it could greatly help my stories and my essays and everything else I write.