[Insert Witty Title of your Choice Here]

By Zack "Period 5 Token Male" Krajnak

Writing has a lot of rules. Grammar, citing, format, where to publish, even what pronouns can be used in which essays. A point of contention between all writers, though, seems to be how to manage the writing process. Start with a mind-map or an outline? Worry about grammar before or after the organization is finalized? Take it nice and slow, or become Stephen King and get 5 pages done in 2 hours every day (and a novel done every month)? Any discussion about how anyone starts their draft will almost certainly be met with a “Well. The way I do my prewriting stage…” before launching into an Iliad worthy epic about how they, personally, write their essays. Why so much disagreement? Why the incessant need to explain and rehash and restate why they do the things they do? Why all the rhetorical questions? Why do we care?

Writers, obviously, are people. People, obviously, are individuals (unless you have an identical twin. Sorry you guys). Thus it follows that writers are individuals (except for twins), so wouldn’t that appear through their writing? Of course it does, usually in the form of voice. A writer’s voice is the unique way they put together their writing, excessive, use, of, commas being an excellent example. Some people like to put together lengthy, eloquent, beautiful sentences that they must think flow from their keyboard like ink from a leaky pen, and, of course, they must be held together with multiple conjunctions. Others write very short sentences. Then they call it a day. Like fingerprints and actual voices, these minute, or extreme as the case may be, differences make it easy to tell one author’s work from another’s. Of course, ghost writers, like voice actors, can manage a passable facsimile of other’s voices, so it's not a foolproof way of determining authorship. Surely there is more that distinguishes writers from one another. And there is.

The aforementioned writing process is generally split into five stages. They are, in their usual order, pre-writing, drafting, editing, revision, and rewriting. Obviously some of these steps require other ones first; you can’t edit or revise a draft that isn’t there yet, and there isn’t much point in pre-writing after you’re done rewriting. However, more than a few of the steps don’t necessarily have to take place in that order. It depends on the writer. Some writers, like myself, do lots of pre-writing while writing the draft, always keeping the plan just a few steps ahead of the piece itself. Others compile a cohesive plan and definite course of action complete with quotes, citations, and key points pre-prepared before they even put the proverbial pen to paper. And for most, editing and revising are not individual steps but part of a fluid process of improving the initial draft. All of these differences point to small aspects of a writer’s personality. If you do less pre-writing (or perform it in a more relaxed manner), it typically comes from a tendency to be disorganized or spontaneous, though not always. All I know is that those writers I know who complete what are essentially entire essays in bullet points are much more organized in the rest of their life than I could ever hope to be, with my notebooks filled with scribbled notes, ideas, and food stains.

Then it's a question of correlation versus causation. Well, not really. We develop our personalities long before we develop our writing style, so anyone’s writing quirks most probably stem from their personality (although this is a generalization; certainly some people may pick things up from others and run with it, but things we develop for ourselves usually stem from personality). One of the more widely accepted (and my personal favorite) models for different personalities is the Myers-Briggs personality test. It divides people into 16 different personality types with 8 traits split between 4 categories. (You can read more about the test and how it relates to writers here) There isn’t really any scientific data about the different personality types in relation to writing style or to anything outside personality, really, but we can make some generalizations.

Statistics and graphic courtesy of moonrat

As one might expect, most writers are introverts; the more cerebral the person, the more likely they’ll express themselves through writing, not loud complaining in a crowded bar. With respect to fiction writing, thinkers (the T in the third category) may be more plot or situation driven due to their planning ability and likelihood to focus on events rather than people, but feelers (the F in the same category) would perhaps be more drawn to romantic or character driven works. With the same respect, thinkers might be more likely to do non-fiction works, like journalism or biographies due to their strong connection to facts and reality, while the feelers among us would perhaps be more frustrated with reality, and chase the romantic feelings we can express more freely in fictitious works. It’s enough to make you wish we had better data on it, huh?

If you’ve got input about how your personality affects your writing, or want to ask me about how my personality affects mine, you can contact me at zack.krajnak@gmail.com or by finding me in one of the dark corners in the school that I inhabit due to my status as an INTP. And feel free to suggest witty titles.

Top Five Reasons Why College Essays Have Got to be “Fun”

Okay. So at this point in time, if you are reading this I am guessing you are a first semester senior who still has to try hard in school, and in addition juggle college applications and standardized testing. Don’t we all LOVE college applications, especially those dreadful college essays which can either be 250 words or 700 words. But if you will, give me five minutes to convince you with five reasons of how college essays can sometimes be fun.

Reason 1: You are more than a robot.

By now, you are probably sick of having to write literary analysis. College essays no matter how constricting the prompt is, for example “Describe some tasks that you have accomplished over the past two years that have no connection to academic studies,” gives you a chance to be creative. You can think of how to phrase each sentence and decide the words that will best show who you are.

Reason 2:“How Many ‘Big Words’ can I use?”

It's almost a trick question to ask how many seniors have used “big words” intentionally in their college essays to make them sound smarter. The response will be that every single senior at some point has pulled out the thesaurus when writing their essays. As important as it is to sound educated, colleges want you to be yourself and thus it becomes a game as to see how many big words you can use and still retain your voice.

Reason 3: Be yourself!

For once you can use “I” and “Me” and “We”. For once it is okay to be yourself in your writing. You can share the personal experiences you have had and write an essay that says: this is ME.

Reason 4: Reflection

It's fun to see the transformation you have gone through in your high school years from the little freshman boy or freshman girl to the now,hopefully, matured young man or young woman. College essays force you to reflect on this development so that you don’t miss the opportunity to realize the amazing change you have gone through.

Reason 5: Graduation in each word

If all the other reasons really haven’t caught your fancy, this one should. Just think about it this way, college essays are one of those things that make you realize you are finally a senior and that in a few months you would be off to college. When you see college essays in this light, there will start to be a bounce in your step when you finally decide to write them.

So see, college essays are not so bad after all. Right?

If you want any advice on managing your time for college essays, or you are just at a lost for what to do with the whole process email me!

You have the RIGHT to WRITE!

It’s always so petty, that moment.

“I don’t have any good ideas.”

“I don’t have anything interesting to say.”

“I will misspell a word and people will judge me for not being the best at never making a mistake in my writing, all of the time, always.”

“I will incorrectly use effect/affect as I may have done above. Wait, did I incorrectly use effect/affect?”

“People will just rip whatever I say apart and hurt my feelings.”

These are all terrible, horrible, no good, very bad reasons.

Look, writing is supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be “because.” It’s important not to lose track of how much greatness happens when you hit keys or write words on paper that are out-of-control feelings you’re dying to share with someone.

There’s some huge misconception about writing—that the people who call themselves writers have any idea what they’re doing. Like everyone thinks they’re Jane Austen or J.K. Rowling or whoever your “whoever” is.

I think people should always write.

It’s easy to overthink it. To think that any piece of writing that you do has to have a point, some giant bigger meaning.

But it should be enough to know that when you write something, anything, it’s like a lottery ticket. Someone could read it and could laugh uncontrollably for the best of reasons. Someone could read it and become violently angry at your view on something (or your “non-view” for that matter). Someone could read it and feel absolutely nothing.

And any one of those things is spectacular.

Because, that’s the “because.” Write just to write. It’s healthy and there is always an amazing off chance that it affects someone more than you had any idea it ever could.

So people might hate what you say. They might really love it. They might feel nothing. Any one of those things is oddly terrifying.

But they will read it.

There’s always the off chance of that, and that’s the whole reason you wrote in the first place.

To make some tiny little piece of you available to anyone who may want it.

It may not be a handwritten calligraphy note, but it’s enough.

It’s more than enough.

Need more reasons to write? Check it out! If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, WRITE me an email!:)

Writing Is Pun

How do you make a copy editor vomit?

Show him a typo. It will make him [sic].

Let’s be honest. A good majority of us hate writing. It’s the thing that makes so many shudder, cringe, and maybe even vomit a little. When people hear the word “writing,” they immediately get this feeling of dread as they think of the impending, boresome hours they will spend writing an essay. “But I don’t wanna write! I’d rather stab myself with a fork a million times. At least that’ll be more fun.”

What if I told you that writing can be fun?

It’s all thanks to a little device called a pun. You probably already have seen and know what a pun is (those clever little play on words that are so cheesy yet so satisfying to read). But, have you ever tried making one yourself? Have you ever tried including one in an essay? If not, let’s get started and have some punny fun by creating some funny puns.

Making puns is something that I personally find pun-derful. With puns, you have the creative license to be tacky (and I do love being tacky--it’s my pun true love). You get to put together funny, clever phrases and sayings that just make you want to laugh and smile. I usually start off by picking a particular word that I want to play with. I then think of all the words associated to that one word and try to mess around with them until I can come up with something fantastically ridiculous. It’s kind of like an amusing, mind-boggling word puzzle in your brain.  

(P.S. there’s nothing better than the feeling you get after coming up with a pun that really packs a pun-ch. You’re like “YEAH. I came up with that.”)

After you create puns, feel free to include them in your essays (well, if your teacher, boss, or other superior won’t pun-ish you for adding humor to your piece). You’ll find yourself enthralled by the puniness of your writing, giggling while trying to come up with ways to outwit yourself with every next sentence you write. Additionally, puns can almost be used in essays of all subjects and will make any class more enjoyable. For example:

For history class, when writing about the Opium Wars, you can say how the Chinese high officials were unable to stop the British from selling opium and interfering with Chinese trade.

Or for math, you can write about how you derived so much knowledge from l’Hopital’s rule, and that the extreme value theorem captured the absolute max of your heart.

Furthermore,

puns can help you get over your writing anxiety and that feeling of dread you have whenever someone assigns you a writing task. Puns teach you how to be clever, inventive, and witty. When it comes time to write, you’ll feel more creative and more prepared, even for those boring, cutthroat five paragraph essays.

So what are you waiting for? 

Thyme won’t wait for you.Get punny! Here’s some visual inspiration to help get you started:

Got any questions? Feel free to email me anytime.