First Response to the Essay

The first thing I noticed about this essay assignment was that in very many ways it is similar to the blog posts we've been doing every week all semester. For one thing, the length is similar. The blogs of my group members vary a bit on word count (Alyssa's tend to be the longest, for example), but I have been shooting for around 800 words per post, which fits securely into the 750-1000 word guideline for this essay. The other thing is that the essay has to have at least two sources. They are probably supposed to be a little more 'scholarly' than the one's I've been using on blogs, but I usually have at least four sources per blog post, so maybe that makes up a little for lack of 'scholarly-ness."

There are also differences, of course, or this wouldn't be a very good unit final. Essays are generally more formal than blog posts (although my rough draft doesn't show it. Hooray for writing last-minute essays at 2:00 in the morning). They are also more heavily edited (supposedly). I considered putting as a difference that the essay is supposed to be an argument, and the blogs are not, but I've had too many advertising units in English classes to believe that there is anything that isn't some sort of argument.

Honestly, the biggest difference for me is that as soon as I sit down and put that fancy header that goes on an "essay," my brain starts vomiting up all the stress and structure and types of phrases that people taught me when I was ten (and in my freshman writing class, but that's a different story) and have been trying to un-teach me ever since. Writing for most things doesn't both me at all, but when I start trying to write an "essay," all of a sudden I freeze up and can't get anything on the page for two hours straight. In fact, I'm writing this blog post now primarily because I'm at a roadblock in my essay, and I'm almost never at a roadblock when I write my blogs.

I decided my general topic (which is what the best way to handle the preservation of old newspapers) over the weekend and had been stewing on it, which is supposed to be helpful and sometimes actually is. I didn't write anything because I was in that panic mode where I convince myself that I'm procrastinating because I'm lazy, and I'm actually just procrastinating because I'm terrified. It's not that the topic is hard. It's not that writing is hard. It's not that anything about it is hard except that it's called an essay.

Which is how it came to be 2:00 (seven hours before I'm supposed to have my rough draft to class), with me just writing the first words. I wrote my the framework for general ideas (missing the last two paragraphs) and it ended up around 400 words, which is about half length, and semi-comprehensible, meaning that when I come back to it tomorrow or the next day, I will have a really easy time making make sense and be 800 words. I suppose that is what rough drafts are for anyway--to get something on paper so when you come back to it later you have something to fix.
(short blog: 554 words. It is nearly 3:00 now, so I'll leave it at that. I hope it made at least some sense)