Week 3 Reading Response

For me, the definition of writing style is hard to pin down because everything I have read (which is not all that much) pertaining to writing style has proven to be very subjective. I think the audience and the message that the writer is attempting to convey play a huge role in determining the style of a particular piece.

In “Shitty First Drafts,” Lamott’s style appears to be solely based on her audience, “the uninitiated,” or those who are new to writing. The audience Lamott is targeting most likely includes people of all ages and demographic circles, to include college students or even those who have wisdom and experience, yet, remain apprehensive when crossing the mental line to undertake the daunting task of writing. In this sense, I do believe Lamott’s writing style clearly helped her drive her point home.

Lamott’s suggestions are right on target and I agree with them. Without knowing all of the mechanics, methodologies, history or rules behind why these suggestions work, I have used these techniques described by Lamott, and the results are always the same; magically, I am able to develop a better sense of purpose and direction for whatever it is that I am writing.

There is one problem though, and it is my problem, but nonetheless here it is. I only like to write when I like to write. That’s it, period! Does that make sense to anybody out there? In other words, there has to be a really strong point that I need to make, or some other compelling reason for me to devote that much time and effort to writing. Perhaps this is due to my career and the untold hundreds of pages of investigative notes, case reports, and other miscellaneous documents I have scribed over the years, but, whatever the reason, I don’t like it. Who knows for sure the reason why? For those of you reading this I understand that you probably couldn’t care less about why I don’t like to write, and I got it, however, perhaps you too share this same feeling and can as least empathize with me.

For those of you who write for a living or simply write because you enjoy it, my hat is off to you. After reading the piece by Lamott for this assignment, I was absolutely dumbfounded. For the life of me, I just can’t understand why you would want to keep going through that crap day in, and day out. Is the money that good?