Before this class, I hadn’t written an English paper since my junior year of high school (an extremely long four years ago). The papers I have written of late have been mainly scientific in nature and thus not focused on style, but rather on concise, accurate research and reporting. If not scientific papers, then they were Spanish papers being written with an emphasis on correct grammar and expression, style never being considered. This ghostwriting experience made me really think about my style and voice as a writer and what I really like about my writing.
I wrote a History paper for my roommate Anna who stylistically writes very different from me. She is very concise and to-the-point and strongly dislikes sentences with more than one comma and most adjectives and adverbs. She likes to put her “howevers” at the beginning of sentences and not use any flashy vocab. I’ve picked up on these patterns to her writing through editing some papers for her other classes and the samples she gave me. When I tried to emulate these patterns, however, I found it extremely difficult and more challenging than I had anticipated (see how my “howevers” always go in the middle?)
I really struggled to write as her and after awhile I just focused on finishing the paper and then went back and changed a few things to sound more like her. I threw in parts of me (my favorite words and a few complex sentences) but tried to keep my flowery voice to a minimum. After writing a respectable first draft (at least, according to my standards), I showed it to her and asked her what she thought and if it sounded like her at all. She attacked my paper with her red pen and with her words. Previously when she had edited my papers, she made minor changes, fixing my inevitable comma and punctuation errors and trying to curb my penchant for run-on sentences. I never felt like my style was attacked, however, just the English grammar I have never learned correctly and am pretty confident I never will. This time, however, was different. While talking to me, she denounced the organization of my writing, my thesis statements, and my “superfluous” vocabulary. My style and voice was the center of the criticism and not just my paper. This made it extremely personal and left me questioning myself as a writer.
After the initial shock, I started to look over the paper I’d written and began making the “Anna-like” corrections. I had a really hard time cutting down some of the sentences into shorter, choppy (at least according to me), concise phrases. Upon completion of these changes, I reread my paper and really disliked it. It didn’t sound like Anna or me and just ended up like a really bad combination of the two. So I went back and changed some of the things back to the way I had originally wrote them. I still kept most of the vocabulary changes and some of the structural changes, but I felt much better about the paper as a whole. So the paper I turned in, while I’m not 100% proud of it, I still feel much better about than the first edited draft I made.
Overall, ghostwriting has helped me find pride in my writing and make me think about what exactly defines my work and voice as a writer. I don’t think I would have an issue if Anna were to turn in my paper as her own, but I highly doubt she would. This experience made me realize that I could ghostwrite an emotionless, quasi-styleless scientific paper quite easily for someone (and I have), but when ghostwriting something that needs a definite voice and style, I would much prefer to use my own than emulate someone else’s. I had thought that ghostwriting was an impersonal un-credited act, but in reality it is much more personal than I ever could have thought.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Amy's story is very interesting to me because I know the person she wrote for since I lived down the hall from both of them last year. I would say even their talking voices are different from each others, but correlate nicely with their respective writing voices.
It would be interesting to have a conversation with both of them listening for how they use their "howevers" is their speech.
Do people write how they talk or do people talk to emulate their writing style?
I'm glad it helped you feel more proud of your writing style. My experience was actually really degrading, but it's cool that you can now look back and have a good reflection. Its difficult to get around that person's writing style, especially if you dont find it pleasing, but it's nice that you got a good experience out of it, I'm jealous.
Post a Comment