Creative nonfiction

Michaela Cullington’s essay, “Does Texting Affect Writing?”, discusses three hypotheses on whether texting carries a negative, positive, or no effect in academic writing. While she was undergraduate student at Marywood University, she wrote this essay in 2010 in response to the bias held by teachers, authors, and students on the effects of texting. Perhaps during the year of 2010, the significant increase of texting led her to write this article. Because technology and electronics perpetually…

William Zinsser, the author of “Simplicity,” was clearly a very simple man. He has figured out that clutter is a common theme in writing. In his essay, he makes it clear that clutter and “fuzz,” in writing can distract and bore a reader. To further prove that William Zinsser is a simple man, he writes and edits three of the same essay to make it easier to understand. One was written in 1980, another in 1998, and finally in 2006. In all three of the essays, the first paragraph remains the…

“I start writing without having very much of a plot in my mind or on paper- only a very hazy idea of what the pattern on the book is to be. But it seems to work itself out as I go along, quite naturally and inevitably. I prefer the word pattern to plot as it sounds more natural and even better if I dare use it is Hopkin’s word “Inscape”- while plot sounds arbitrary, heavy headed and artificial- all that I wish to avoid. One should have a pattern and then fit each piece in keeping with others…

The suspense essay was a surprisingly hard essay to work on, I say this because I already know i'm not the best writer, so doing this was extremely stressful, but I completed it. When we first were told about the essay we had to choose what stories we were going to write about, I chose the stories “Cujo” written by Stephen King and the story “Sorry, Wrong Number” written by Lucille Fletcher. Once we decided on the stories we had to work with a partner to chose two pieces of evidence from each…

My freshman year of highschool; and I was in my first ever AP course. I was taking AP Human Geography taught by Mr. Johnson. I first enjoyed the class and then my effort diminished as the year went on; all he wanted me to do was my homework. Don’t get mistaken me, he was a great teacher, but his methods were foreign to me. Also, I was rarely allowed to go to the bathroom. Although he was a rough teacher, I thought of it more as a fun competition to prove who is better. Not only did I try to…

have read many books along my schooling career but none that have helped my quite this much in my personal life. I am going to explain to you why I chose this book, how this book has impacted me, how this book relates to other practices, and finally, how this book will affect my practice and my personal choices. 10-minute mindfulness: 71 Simple Habits for Living in the Present Moment We had two choices of books, and I chose to read 10-Minute Mindfulness: 71 Simple Habits for Living in the…

The greatest lessons in life are generally learned through past experiences one has, yet for many others, lessons can be learned through a work of literature, within the challenges the character’s face. Although often perceived that one cannot fathom the challenges the other faces until they face the challenge themselves, both A Doll’s House and A Lesson Before Dying challenge that idea, as through literature, I felt as if I faced the struggles the characters faced and learnt from them. In…

Prewriting The idea of prewriting is so the writer can organize all his thoughts onto paper to construct a well written essay. The key to prewriting is starting early, staying on topic, and having a variety of ideas to include in the paper. Many writers have trouble with prewriting because it takes time to think what to write about. Jean Kerr, a famous writer, admitted she reads soup can labels to avoid her time thinking of something to write (3). In Steps to Writing Well, Jean Wyrick delivers…

In John M. Williams’ book, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, he discusses the concepts of characters, actions and concision in writing in chapters three, four and nine. Williams emphasizes these points as a part of his vision that writers should write clearly and anyone can write in this manner (2). When a writer understands and applies Williams’ principals as described in these chapters, the reader will perceive the writing more clearly and directly (46). Williams focuses on making the…

In my seventeen years of living I have encountered many obstacles, but I have obviously overcome them because I am writing this essay. I’d have to say that my Sophomore Year of high school was one of the worst years I have ever had so far. I went in with high hopes and big dreams and I came out even sadder and filled with dread. As Freshman Year ended, I made a list of goals I would like to achieve in my Sophomore Year. A few things I jotted down were; the cliche fall in love, learn what…