My Essay: The Quality Of My Writing

All major writing projects begin with a mandatory trip to Staples for colored pens and packs of rainbow sticky notes followed by a coffee run at Quills on Cardinal Blvd. I get home and double check that everything in the apartment is clean since I struggle to focus in messy home. Once my ducks are in a row I color coordinate my writing tools across the coffee table and plop down into my fuzzy, green papasan chair. I turn on Pandora Radio to the Arctic Monkey’s station and set a kitchen timer to commit myself to 45 minutes of undistracted brainstorming.

Once my pre-writing rituals are taken care of, I start the writing process by researching tips for the type of paper I need to write. For scholarships, I Google common essay mistakes and advice from scholarship committee members. For analytical or persuasive essays I track down advice for putting together a solid, logical outline. For comedic narratives, I browse Reddit for funny posts and study what makes that particular story funny. When I have locked down the type of essay I am dealing with, the colored pens come out and I regurgitate everything on my mind for 5 to 10 minutes. This will involve my ideas on what would make a good essay; what
In a strange way I am mico-managing myself in the brainstorming process instead of letting myself write and then coming back to the revising process. The biggest weakness in my writing process is I don’t know what is considered “done” as I don’t always like having my family or friends read my essays. I run the papers through PolishMyWriting.com, Grammarly.com, ProWritingAid.com, PaperRaters.com, and sometimes HemingwayApp.com, but there isn’t any website to check for the “interesting” factor. I’ve noticed in some of my past scholarship essays I had all the grammar worked up, but the essay was a dry and deadpan like stale