I thoroughly enjoyed reading Vonnegut’s article, because it brought my attention to something I had never really thought about before… my own personal writing style. Throughout the entire article Vonnegut revealed his personal writing style to the reader, not only by mentioning specific aspects of his writing, but also by demonstrating these aspects in his article. His six object of advice “say what you mean to say,” is something I struggle with as a writer. This relates back to number two, “Do not ramble.” I often find myself being repetitive in my writing, because I am trying to make or re-emphasize a specific point to the reader. Vonnegut put writing in a different perspective for me by acknowledging the reader first. In order to improve and develop a personal writing style, Vonnegut suggests for the writer to consider the reader, so the writer can make his or her paper as time worthy and perfect as possible. I thought this was great advice, because I know when read an article, a book, etc. the style and tone of the writer has a great deal to do with whether or not I enjoy reading their work. As for my own writing style, I would say that I tend to write as I speak, even though my writing is more organized and proper than my speech. Since I was born and raised in the south, I would say that my style and tone throughout my writing probably has a bit of a southern twang to it. Personally, I do not even notice any kind of southern accent in my speech, but all of my cousins from up north continuously point out my usage of the phrase “y’all” and many other common southern phrases that I subconsciously use throughout my speech and writing. Overall, my writing does indeed “sound like” myself, which forms my own personal writing style.
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2 comments:
Austin,
I agree that Vonnegut's "say what you mean to say" was important. I feel like I always have trouble with this too. Sometimes I'll get into this flow of ideas and I'll start rambling on, stating whatever ideas that come to my mind. On the subject of your accent, you definitely have one! Your cousins are right, you can't tell if you have an accent because it's your normal speech. But its funny to see that you don't consider them to have an accent as well. Maybe it's because people assume proper English is northern English. But who is to tell which is which. Anyway, I enjoyed your thoughts on your writing style and I'll see you in class tomorrow!
I can understand where your comming from on the rambling issue because I do it too. If it wasn't for the "say what you mean section" I would have been really mad at his "Do not ramble" section cause thats all it said, but the elaboration is tied to the say what you mean section so it was ok. If you say ehat you mean and use all the write words to get your point across then you can stop yourself from rambling. As for having an accent in your writing that use to happen to me all the time when I was younger. However and believe that in your case a southern accent really brings out your writing and make your own style really show. The problem with me was that my accent was in spanish so my homework in elementry school was written in spanglish! I would go back and translate everything to english but sometimes I would miss something and it would confuse everyone!
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