When reading these two chapters I noticed that they were connected in a few ways. In 'The Samurai' I noticed that a common theme was "being honest with yourself in your writing." Often times as writers, we will one day be struck with an idea that simply NEEDS to be put to paper. Unfortunately, while it very well may be an excellent idea, it doesn't fit in your story! But, you just CAN'T let it go! When will you get another idea like this again?! So, you do your best to make it fit, and ends up just not flowing at all. As Goldberg phrased it "...Quit beating an old horse." This is something that I realize I also need to work on. I don't know if I am honest with myself when reading my own work. I might even be over critical and just hate everything that I write all together.
After reading this chapter I moved onto the 'Rereading and Rewriting' chapter and noticed that, when paired with the previous one, it seemed to flow together nicely. When Goldberg said that it was a good idea to wait a while before rereading your work, that kind of took be by surprise. That is something I am not used to. Most of my knowledge on 'how to write' has come from my secondary education. In school once your rough draft is finished you are told to reread it and check over it for spelling, grammar, and other errors. But you are never given any "time away from your writing." You could also have peer reviews, which let's face it, in high school are NOT effective in anyway. Just to give an example, when doing peer reviews in class I would give my writing to someone, often times a person I that I was paired up with by my teacher, and I would awkwardly watch them read my piece. After "reading" my work this person would look up at me, hand me back my paper and say "it's good." And when the time came around for ME to read their piece if I didn't think their writing was up to par, or give them the same response they had given me, it would almost be deemed as being arrogant! A small critique as simple as "you forgot to capitalize" would get you a stink eye burning in the back of your head for the rest of the semester.
I've noticed that when I can actually come back to my writing after an extended period of time, I am more aware of mistakes, and willing to make changes to sentences. I'll even cut out huge chunks of paragraphs and end up with an even smaller piece than I started out with. I become more honest with my work in saying if it is good or bad. Unfortunately when I actually write out of my own leisure time I will become bored with my story, and throw it in a folder and never look at it again. I have this thing about starting over when I try to complete something that I don't like. (I know I do this a lot but I'm going to compare this to when I'm painting.) If I am painting an oil painting for example, and I realize the composition could be different, or the color scheme looks off, I will scrap that piece and start a completely different one!. Someone else would think it was crazy, spending four or more hours on a painting, realizing you could change it and then starting completely over from scratch. But, it honestly doesn't bother me. I have confidence in my creative abilities I guess. This is the same with my writing. If I realize something could be changed to make it better. I will often times just start over! I think it's because I like having a clean slate, or a blank canvas to work with. It's nice not knowing how your work will exactly turn out. Even if you have an end goal in mind, getting there will be different every time.
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