Creative Writing
Most people would rather talk than write. Pressed for
creative writing, they draw a blank, or feel either that
they have nothing new to say or that whatever they have to
say could be said better by someone else. Yet when you talk
to hesitant writers about assignments at work or school, you
find they have too much to say: they are swamped by their
research, and feel helpless in trying to sort out their own
arguments in a clear and forceful way.
Most professional writers agree that the surest way to become a
better writer is to read, think, and write a great deal. This site
offers an intensive program in creative writing. Many of the
exercises present you with a set of jumbled sentences which are like
pieces of a puzzle that can be arranged into a complete picture. You
will read the sentences and analyze the ideas to see how each piece
fits together with the other pieces to form a coherent description
or argument. Then you will write the sentences (from memory as much
as possible) in the best logical order to form a convincing,
informative paper. In some sections you will be asked to organize
and write sentences for several such papers before beginning your
own, original papers.
Do not think this is a waste of time. The creative writing
exercises give you firsthand experience with a variety of
ideas as well as sentence and argument patterns that you can
employ in your own writing. Of course you also will be asked
to write original and creative papers. You will be given
guidance in going through the steps used by successful
writers. In fact, some sections are totally devoted to
helping you write your own generalization-specifics papers -
the type required on many writing exams. But the sentence
arranging exercises will provide a foundation of experience
with language and idea patterns that you can draw upon for
these original papers.
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