Essay Sample about Writing

Writing is one of the most effective ways of getting one’s ideas across to the desired audience consisting of people from various parts of the world. Writers put a significant amount of time and effort into their work and improve their weaknesses using feedback from their peers or readers. After working on their weaknesses, writers can noticeably enhance their literary works, only to receive more constructive criticism from readers in the future, which creates a never-ending loop allowing writers to constantly tweak the quality of their work to be better than the previous one. I, too, go through this loop of criticism and improvement when I get constructive feedback on my essays from my professors in the university, which allows me to see what errors I make and what areas of writing I can work on to get a better grade in the future. In essence, writing is a way for individuals to convey their ideas to the world and work on their ability to write by utilizing the feedback they receive to their advantage.

Reading feedback on a specific piece of work promotes a writer’s ability to identify what they are doing wrong. When one repeats the process of pinpointing weaknesses and working on them several times, one can work towards a near-perfect version of their work. Although no piece of writing can be perfect in its literal sense, writers can always work towards what they believe is the best possible work they can produce by implementing the suggestions from their feedback. I found that my use of unnecessary contractions kept me from receiving a grade that I would be proud of in my previous essays. An example of this would be my use of words like “doesn’t” (Mumtaz, 1) and “aren’t” (Mumtaz, 1), which my professor mentioned was something I needed to work on to prevent my essay from gaining an informal tone when the rest of it is in a formal one. I understood the feedback provided by my professor and applied the suggested improvements in my following essays to ensure that I did not receive the same remark about my use of contractions again.

I believe that all the essays I have written this semester at university portray Anne Lamott’s main thoughts behind her writing Shitty First Drafts, which I can explain if I look at my essays as nothing but words that get marked to return a grade. I have received a slightly improved score for every piece I have submitted than in the one I submitted before it. When talking about first drafts, Lamott says every “good writer writes them” (Lamott, 1), allowing them to produce “good second drafts and terrific third drafts” (Lamott, 1). If I apply Lamott’s thoughts about drafts to the progression of the quality of my essays over time, I can envision a parallel image where the papers I have written are the drafts that Lamott talks about; the more the number of essays I write, the more the experience I gain through constructive feedback, and the better my following essay can be. 

To reiterate a point I stated earlier, though no writer is perfect, every writer can be the best version of themselves if they take criticism positively rather than negatively. Once a writer can please his audience by giving them what they thought he lacked, he can keep doing that to satisfy the same audience more the next time he decides to write and follow the same pattern again. Essentially, no audience can be wholly delighted with what they read, and no writer can be wholly delighted with what they write. The never-ending loop of criticism and improvement can benefit both the writer and the reader; the writer keeps improving on his areas of weakness, and the readers keep getting the opportunity to read a piece of work that is better than the last one they read.