Thursday, August 28, 2008

Orwell and Lamott

I started out with Lamott's essay, which I actually liked quite a bit. I especially loved her use of metaphors and similes, which were original and thought-out, yet fitting. 
I also have a tendency to try and perfect the first draft of an essay, which I would like to work on in this class. The English class I took last year was not very demanding for me as a writer, so I have a feeling that I used many phrases and descriptions we read every day.  Writing new material can be intimidating at times, just because it feels like everything has already been done. It's very difficult to come up with something fresh these days, in my opinion.
Orwell's essay was definitely more technical. Ever since I read 1984, I've found him to be a very mechanical thinker/writer.  I have to admit that I have a hard time relating to his work and didn't really connect to his essay as much as Lamott. I know we talked about keeping work concise and short, and I feel like she accomplished that much more than Orwell. However, I seriously doubt that Orwell was intending to publish this essay online. He did get his point across, however, and made me realize how much I seem to butcher the English language. Nothing like a hard grammatical slap in the face, eh?

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