Bad a structured writing?

[AlexMitu]

So for my AP Lang. & Comp. class, we have to write an essay comparing the effectiveness of Hawthorne and Miller to convey the belief that the "individual conscience should always supersede the rule's of one's religion" through use of pathos. We have to use 2 quotes from the books The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible (respectively). We also have to convey our stance on the topic using more quotes from the book, and examples from history. It's so structured, he's even grading us on font...

Anyway my point is, I finished the essay a few hours ago, and it's probably one of the crappiest things I've ever written, and I feel terrible about it.

Now last year, for Honors World Lit. we had to write an essay, "Who has inspired you in life?", that was the only form of structure, the rest was up to us. I wrote 5 pages on my dad, and it was probably one of the best things I've written. My teacher wrote a mini paragraph as feedback saying she loved it!

Well I want to be a journalist, so I was wondering, does the former mean I'm a bad writing and shouldn't think about going into this field, or does the latter provide some hope?

For discussion purposes, what kind of writing do you like to do?

 

[Griphphin]

Structured writing is something you'll have to get used to (at least going into college, I can't tell you in a career after that), but don't look at the bits of structure as obstacles, look at them as guidelines and form your paper around them. You may just be thinking it's a bad paper because that's one of those annoyingly long English subjects that are a chore to even read, coupled with a lot of annoying guidelines, whereas the other paper you wrote was completely up to you, with a subject that makes the words flow, making for easier writing.

I prefer to write in as personally a manner as possible, myself. The more I have to put in that I don't want to, the less it feels like the paper is "mine" in a way.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I think it's just a bad writing assignment. That's almost like a class question type thing; can you guys find 2 examples to back up this theme? Or that's like a homework question you should answer in like a paragraph, not an essay. I would talk about how individual conscience SHOULD be one's religion. My thing on religion is that it should be very personal and everyone should pretty much have their own religion. I really don't understand how thousands, millions, or billions of people can believe in the same exact things. Religion covers such a grand scheme of things that no two people should share the exact same beliefs across the board.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

I work best with unstructured writing and a huge deadline.

For you, there's certainly hope. Sometimes assignments don't "click", and you write something shitty. Other times, they will, and you'll turn out a masterpiece. One bad essay isn't indicative of your over all talent.

I mean, I don't know how much freedom journalists get, but it's probably a lot.

 

[Woodsey]

Do you not edit what you've written after-the-fact?

That's what I've always done with essays; I rearrange, cut things out, add things in, re-phrase sentences, edit punctuation, etc. etc.

It helps me to have a general structure when I start, but my final piece is normally the result of 2 or 3 iterations by the time I'm finished. A lot of the time you have to chisel away at what you want to say instead of shitting a golden brick in one fell swoop.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I work best with unstructured writing and a huge deadline.

For you, there's certainly hope. Sometimes assignments don't "click", and you write something shitty. Other times, they will, and you'll turn out a masterpiece. One bad essay isn't indicative of your over all talent.

I mean, I don't know how much freedom journalists get, but it's probably a lot.

This.

Deadlines seem to choke my creativity and I hate being told what to write about. Let the ideas get down on the paper first. Structure can come later.