My Reading Responses to Approaching the Process Essay
After reading Maya Lin's “Between Art and Architecture”, I found her writing approach to be very personal and emotionally reflective. Much of her style is akin to that of a memoir, which disassociates itself from most formal writings. For the most part, formality tends to neglect the subjective undertones that creates some depth to the draft. Lin avoided that flaw by getting to the heart of the issue, rather than simply to descriptively describe what the subject matter is. If I were to write a process paper, I first have to understand what mood I am trying to explore. In Lin's case, where it involved some levels of grief and loss, it is especially important to create some emotional understanding with the people who were directly affected by that given event. She was also very selfless in the sense that she only cared for the sentiments of her audience, not her own. I feel this also applies to writing, where if we don't engage some kind of tonality or some pathos to the reader, we can completely lose touch with what we are trying to express. Ultimately, Lin's deviation by the use of subjectivity was what allowed her to stick out from hundreds who competed in drafting the memorial.
When reading Paul McHenry Roberts' article, “How to Say Nothing in 500 Words”, I felt it was really trying to assert the importance of expressive writing over descriptive writing. For some writers, it can be hard to escape the generality, for reason that it is what sounds the most sense to us. So few of us can rely on abstraction, for its unconventional nature in structure. In the same time, however, what may sound too unconventional, can also entail the paper's worth on the originality spectrum. Much of what I learned from this essay was the sense of value for the use of illustrations. At times, I can be too concrete with my content. This in effect prohibits me from exploring any form of creativity into my writing. So through the use of this aspect, I can atheistically connect my experiences with the reader. I also admired Robert's critical assessment on the role of word choices. With some writings, there can be words where we tend to draw some compelling associations with what we have personally felt in the past. This is especially important when one is trying convey some level of subjective depth into the writing. For me, I take elation in finding interpretations in any piece of reading. Thus, I feel associative wording can benefit the tonality for the writer.
I feel that the most definitive way when writing the process draft is to be tonally informative about the given subject matter. For me at least, I want to get my message directly across, without any hinderance structurally wise. In Caroline Rego's, “The Fine Art of Complaining”, she has done just that, by listing out the do's and not to do's when articulating a formal complaint. Much of the emphasis is the formation of reader engagement, through the use of direct comments and approaches. Thus, Rego expressed a very straightforward writing style, that doesn't create any ambiguity. While ambiguity can offer creative thinking for the draft, it still has the potential to obscure the writer's underlying viewpoint. There will be cases where I get lost in the midst of reading, because the writing was contextually abstract. While I know that the writer was trying get some point across, the draft's clarity didn't flow in the way where I can access any clear judgements on. I also admired the way Rego utilized the developmental stages of writing an effective complaint. This aspect offered a direct, step-by-step method that made the draft plausibly sound. This kind of organizational style can easily be the model for any piece of writing, where the flow of progression is concerned.
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