Writing for School.

[i-arr-pirate.livejournal.com]

We were just recently assigned to do a 5-10 page short story in my English class, and I was wondering: Does anyone else feel pressure when it comes to writing as schoolwork? :/

There's so many things that weigh down on me when I'm writing anything for school. Especially for this assignment in particular.

a.) It has to be as flawless as I would make any of my personal stories. I always keep a dictionary and thesaurus at hand, triple-check my words, and proofread like a mad woman. And I do this even when I know my classmates are just writing with a detached: "Joe ran. He likes to run. It felt awesome. The end."

b.) The deadline always freaks me out. I mean, I've never finished a story that wasn't for school. NEVER! D:> For our short story, we had about three days to write a rough draft and only ONE to write down the summary. Which to some is fine, but I hadn't even thought of a decent plot line. And I knew I'd have to use up my personal time to research some satisfactory names, plot-hole fillers, etc.

The final draft is due Monday (we got lucky because a power-outage destroyed a lot of the work we did in school) but I'm pretty much done. The only reason I managed to finish so much, though, is because I took it home and worked on it there. And if you knew me, you'd know it's incredibly out of character for me to do ANY SCHOOLWORK at home, much less DAYS before the due date. My mom was verbally aghast: "You did something without waiting to the last minute?!"

But nevertheless, I feel frustrated that I could've just written it like my classmates did, but couldn't bring myself to do so. And the worst part, I don't even want to be a writer when I grow up! It's just something I do passively in my spare time! It's crazy! x'D

So basically, I'm just curious. Does anyone else do this as well? Are you able to make yourself write like an regular person, or do you obsess over every word? If you do, is it out of pride or just because you can't bring yourself not to? Do you write better or worse when under pressure?

Comments

[alishenai.livejournal.com]

I took both English and English Lititure at highschool and we often had to write short stories etc for both classes. However although I like writing I hated the fact that we were always rushed in creative writing at school. The standard due date was usually 2 weeks after the task had been set. Therefore I would often spend the first week just brain storming and the second week writing. So I know what it's like watching the others write away whilst your still struggling with the plot and everything else that goes with it. I could never just put a pen on paper and write like that. I always needed time to think.

[thebonedawg.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. I need time to think and plan before I can write. And not just with fiction, but we did a lot of in-class essays in school, and I hated them because I'd spend the first 20 minutes just trying to outline what I wanted to write, and then the last part of class hurriedly trying to scribble it all down.

[foreveruppercut.livejournal.com]

Yeah I use to feel huge amounts of pressure when I wrote in school. I think the best way to defeat that is just write naturally.

[mari-mac1109.livejournal.com]

School, for me, is all writing. I'm studying fiction writing and minoring in playwriting, so I have to turn in about ten to fifteen pages a week of prose and drama. It was rough at first, but by now, I really appreciate it. The pressure is only to produce good work--improvement happens through practice, discussion and revising. The expectation of "perfect" work is non-existent. If we were producing perfect work, we wouldn't be there. :)

[thebonedawg.livejournal.com]

I would say I tend to write worse under pressure. Story-wise, anyway. Normal essay-type papers I do fine under pressure. But fiction, I need time to plan it out and think about it. I need time to let the characters and scenes soak into my brain and become a part of me. Weird to some, but it works for me.

I do think I need more structure in my method to writing. Sometimes I'll be working on a story and then go a month or two without writing a single thing for it. It's immensely frustrating, and I want to change it, but that's how I've been writing so far.

I used to obsess over every word and try to make it perfect the first time around. But I realized that that method was taking up way too much time. I'd have a scene or a specific line in mind and I'd spend too much effort trying to structure the sentence properly that the concept would completely slip away. So now I just write down what I want to say -- whether it was a good piece of dialogue or a vivid description or anything else. And I worry about the details later.

I prefer to be around a good thesaurus while I write, but sometimes I'm not. So if I can't quite think of the right word, I'll write down one similar and highlight it in some way so I'll know to consult the thesaurus when I start editing.

[xarixian.livejournal.com]

I feel a lot of pressure when writing something for my course. Essays I can handle because there's room to waffle. My deadline is about 4 weeks away which is ages but I'm feeling pressure to come up with stuff now because it needs to be criticised and approved. I think deadlines are kind of good because other wise I wouldn't ever finish a story that isn't a fanfic. But also I hate them because if you've been working on a story and realise it's no good, that it's not going anywhere, you have to just run with it instead of scrapping it. I suppose it's a bit different to school though, where I never really cared, I just wrote what came into my head and generally ended up with an A, or at least a B. For imagination, I suppose. Whereas now it all counts toward my final degree which is terrifying, so if I screw up this story my whole mark comes down. Panic doesn't help progress my work.