During my high school years, I always faced writer’s block. It was difficult, no, terrifying to write.
I took an AP Literature class in high school, and our teacher made us write an impromptu essay every hour because we had to take an AP exam that required us to write three essays within the time limit. Writing an impromptu essay was my least favorite. I would always spend time constantly writing and erasing the first sentence, regardless of whether the teacher gave us 30 minutes or an hour to write. Looking around, I could only see papers filled with letters. I felt like a failure looking at my paper with only the first sentence written, or even without the first sentence. I always had to hold back my tears.
It didn’t mean that I couldn’t write. I actually had a lot to write. My head was overflowing with ideas. I couldn’t write because I couldn’t start writing. I felt stuck; it was like being blocked by a wall. I could move forward once I went over this wall, but I couldn’t.
At the time, I thought a perfect first sentence was necessary to write the perfect piece of writing. Even though now it seems ridiculous to define a sentence wrong to me, I thought messing up the first sentence was like buttoning up the first button of the clothes wrong, misleading the entire writing process. Ironically, I wasn’t even a good enough writer to write a perfect first sentence. I was merely obsessed with the perfect first sentence that was virtually impossible and didn’t even exist in the world.
There was no such thing as a perfect first sentence, and nobody could write perfectly from the beginning. Not even Shakespeare would have thought so. I was arrogant enough to believe that the perfect first sentence existed and that I could write it.
I realized that perfectionism was the writer’s block that had been blocking me. No one pushed me to write a perfect piece of writing. The teacher didn’t give me half an hour to write because she wanted me to write perfectly within 30 minutes. The same went for the AP exam. The goal of the exam was to write an essay that meets the condition requested by each question, not to write a perfect essay in time.
Being a reporter for Ewha Voice for almost two years, I’ve realized that it is much easier to fix a finished article than trying to write perfectly from the beginning.
I liked proofreading the most throughout the entire publication process. It is an activity in which reporters finally proofread each one another’s articles and give feedback to one another, just like the process of making jewels by crafting and refining gemstones.
Writing and revising the same article over and over makes the writer have an affection for it, and it makes the writer blind. It is hard to read my article objectively. So even though it can’t be, it looks like perfect writing to me. All the writers need proofreaders to look at what they don’t see and are missing.
Of course, sometimes I think something is completely wrong while writing. Even in that case, proofreaders would point out the exact defect which I could feel but not see. If I refind it little by little, the article gets better and better.
Sometimes, the article got different from the first draft through proofreading. Nevertheless, I always liked the refined article much better. Writing perfectly from the beginning was impossible, but revising the article to make it perfect was possible.
Today, even when I write not for Ewha Voice, I go through my own proofreading process. First, I set a tight time limit for myself and quickly write an essay on time. Then, I read it again in a day or two. I can notice a defect that wasn’t visible before. Repeating this process once or more, I find more and more defects and, at last, end up with an essay that I can somewhat be satisfied with.
Now that I’m about to finish my two-year career as a reporter, I no longer fear writing–even though I’m still not a good writer. Thank you, Ewha Voice.