The Critic Inside Me by Nicole Ingrati
I completely re constructed my writer’s letter. The reason I completely changed
that was because I do not think I completely understood what the purpose of that letter
was. I then realized that we are suppose to talk about what our thought process was while
we were coming up with our story. This was something quite challenging for me because
I do not typically talk about my writing process. When I am writing something I usually
get stuck in the moment and I cannot always recall what I was thinking while I was
writing. I always like to take on new challenges so I think that this has helped me not just
act in the moment but really take time and think before I write.
I didn’t change my story at all because I felt as though the reader could
understand the message I was trying to send and could therefore relate to my piece. I
made small grammatical changes to the best of my ability as my fellow peers told me.
I am sure that their will always be some grammatical errors in my writing but I am still
learning and mistakes make who we are as writers and people. As far as the context of the
story that remained as the original simply because I as the author was very happy about
the way it came out and in my opinion if something isn’t broken you don’t fix it.
Also another big issue I realized I have in this piece (and in most pieces) is that
I write the way I speak. This can sometimes be a good thing but in this case I needed to
let my writing speak for itself instead over explaining or over analyzing. When I speak to
someone a sentence I would use is “What I mean to say is…” I think that I do not need to
write that because as I said before you shouldn’t have to explain the writing should speak
for itself.
The Critic Inside Me by Nicole Ingrati
Dear Lisa,
Something I really want you to focus on while you are reading this is that I didn’t
always enjoy writing until fairly recently. What I had in mind for my reader is that not
only talking about my journey as a writer but also trying to make them understand that
we all have a purpose for why we write no matter what we are writing about. It could be
anything from a school assignment like this one or a simple text message. The first
question I posed to myself was: When were you actually excited about writing? That is
where my story began, and of course that was in college. Once I figured out what
experience I wanted to write about it became a little easier to organize the rest of my
story. I stress a little!
Next I thought to myself what is the overall message you are trying to send to
your readers? I wanted to touch on the subject of students or people in general being their
own worst enemy or in this case their own worse critic. I thought about the many times I
told myself you can’t do this and I said to myself I am sure you are not the only one who
feels this way. I wanted to construct a piece that anyone who was reading it could relate
or at least the majority for that matter.
I tend to be very organized in many aspects of my life but something I struggle
with ironically is organizing my writing and making it easy to understand, but most
importantly, creating what I like to call the flow. If your writing does not flow chances
are that its not going to be easy to understand and therefore your readers will not want to
continue or even attempt to try and make out what you are saying.
Finally what I always seem to struggle with is the conclusion of any piece of
writing. I wanted to get my readers to continue thinking about there own criticizing. I
The Critic Inside Me by Nicole Ingrati
thought to myself how do I wrap this up in a way that is not boring and keeps my readers
thinking even after they have heard my paper? Do I summarize the main points? Do I end
with a question or a quote? These questions are still unanswered for me and I hope that as
I continue my writing journey I will one day figure out.
Writer’s Story:
Why do we read? Why do we write? The simple answer to that is because we
have a voice and because we all have our opinions. No matter what the issue or task is
you either agree or disagree. Once I realized this I let the critic in me loose. I had not
always thought of writing as a way of expressing myself and letting my voice be heard.
I use to despise any writing assignment I had to do no matter what it was. The day I
became a writer was when I finally understood that what I say matters. That of course
came in the middle of my college career.
I was in my last semester at Kingsborough and I was taking an English class
that dealt solely with Shakespeare. In the beginning of the semester the critic in me
thought how could your writing mean anything when compared to the great works of
Shakespeare? Lucky for me I was learning how to tune out that negative voice in my
head and I had a great professor whom I will never forget. Throughout the semester
we had to create and respond to blog posts that had to do with whatever play we were
reading. The professor would select two of use to pose a question or thought and let
everyone else would write a response and she would not get involved. This was the first
time in my writing experience that I had a real audience not just a professor. I liked the
idea of being to speak freely with my classmates. It was in that class that I began to let go
The Critic Inside Me by Nicole Ingrati
and write exactly what I thought and how I felt.
Throughout that semester I would respond to blog posts that my fellow classmates
started and eventually I got my own chance to create a thread. You could imagine
how nervous I was. Everyone in my entire class is going to not only see my writing
but also analyze and comment on it. The discussion I started was on Act 5 of the play
The Merchant of Venice. Although I was nervous I did not hold back and in the end it
paid off. Not only did the professor believe I brought up a good argument a lot of my
classmates felt the same. From this point on I had less of a fear of writing.
The reason I think I enjoyed writing those blog posts was because in my opinion
there was less pressure. What I mean to say is that when I know my professor is going to
read and critique my pieces of writing I become my own worst critic and tried to make
everything perfect. With the blog posts I was free to share my thoughts through writing
but not by trying to fit this idea of the perfect paper but rather by being myself and
expressing my thoughts to my peers.
The final turning point for me as a writer came in that same semester in
our final project. The task was as follows: we were to take one of the plays that we read
(our favorite) and cast the play. Once again this posed a challenge because there was that
little critic in my head that kept saying how could you write anything worthwhile? You
are no Shakespeare? Yet again I had to silence myself and think about the overall
message that Shakespeare was trying to portray and how it is still relevant today. I had to
cast the play and I was allowed to make minor changes as well. The important thing to do
was to explain why I did what I did. This was a big project and I had to break down piece
by piece. The play I choose to focus on was Othello. The reason I choose Othello was
The Critic Inside Me by Nicole Ingrati
because not only had we just read it (so it was fresh in my mind) but also I felt as though
it was still relevant today. I realized that not everyone was going to understand my
mindset so I really tried to write it in a way that everyone could understand so I set the
play in modern times. Doing this project helped me realize that as a writer you are
suppose to express yourself and not everyone will always agree with you and that’s okay.
The purpose of writing in my opinion is to relay some type of message and to of course
share your thoughts with your audience. As long has your message has been heard you
have been a successful writer.
My views of writing have changed and I am sure they are going to continue to
change as I grow as a student and eventually as I develop in my future career. The sheer
thought of writing use to cause me nothing but disappointment. I used to be my own
worst critic in trying to live up to an idea. When I finally realized that writing is about
expression I was able to silence that critic and help better develop my writing capability.
If it wasn’t for that Shakespeare class I highly doubt I would have had the views on
writing that I do today. I have come to recognize that although that little critical voice
in my head was negative it also pushed me to become a better writer. I wanted to prove
myself wrong and show that I was very capable of writing many great pieces.