Looking back on Nonfiction Writing

This class has been pretty good so far. I think I've learned a lot about the process of writing and writing itself, and I think I have definitely improved as a writer, at the very least in terms of the time it takes me to write an essay. For NonFic I have tried to write about things that I truly cared about, rather than just things that I need to write because there is a paper or a blog post due. That has worked out sometimes, and other times it hasn't, but all of it is a learning process. And I mean that in more ways than one: I have gotten better at thinking through writing. Usually when I think what I do is I poke at a thought constantly in my head until I have it figured out, often forgetting where it was I was going in the first place. But when I write the sentence down, I am forced to really think it through, and if I forget it, I can always look back and read what my thoughts were. I think that has helped my writing a lot. Also, I think another important thing that I have learned to do is type at least at an average speed. Before I would get about 40 wpm max, but now I can consistently do about 55. It is amazing how much that has increased my efficiency. In some ways, now I am about twice as efficient. I think that in in our daily lives, being efficient with writing is probably one of the most important things that we can learn. Before I would spend days on one paper, and always turn them in late, but now I can write them in one day. That really frees me up to do other things. Most people are not going to be writing complex literature in which they have to agonize over every word. All we need to learn is to be able to get our ideas out onto paper in a coherent way. Yes, being able to write like Shakespeare or Virginia Wolfe does have it's place, but that is not a thing that most of us have to worry about. I think that is why our teachers really stress 'unpacking' our language and explaining what we mean. If we only gesture at a complex topic, often times we don't really understand it ourselves. That brings me back to understanding through writing. The process of writing does help clear up ideas, true, but I think that more importantly it is being forced to completely think through ideas that is the most helpful. When we are thinking about a topic in our daily lives, we tend to not think about it very deeply. Even when we research some vague interest or question of ours, such as if it is bad to drink cold beverages while eating, we usually do not dig very deep, looking only at the first few articles that will confirm or deny our thoughts. But when we are forced to write six pages on a topic, we are forced to go much further. Anyways, I'm not really sure what the point of the blog post was, but here it is.