It is not good enough to have good punctuation, grammar, and a thorough investigation of a topic to have good writing skills. My prof in my one class today, after giving us our second paper's back, first started out with giving us a lot of praise.

"Excellent punctuation choices."

"You all are very talented writers."

Next, however, he told us that the purpose of his class is to produce better writers. We are all good writers -- maybe even excellent (maybe let's just leave it at "good") -- but we have to get better.

"Where is your voice in your writing? You are using the personal "I" as a neutral, or at least very nice person -- where is the force, the bluntness, the animosity or anger or sadness or curiosity? Where are you taking chances? Your writing is too nice. It's a pleasure to read, but where is the surprise?"

Take a chance, take a chance take a chucka-chan-chance.

It's so easy to try to help reader's decipher each and every bit of writing, or an art piece for that matter. It's hard for me to let go, to assume that my point is going to come across. To leave it open to interpretation. I like explaining things.

I have been taught, since the start of my writing career, that for a good piece of writing you need an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. This class is challenging this.

"You don't need an introduction. Start in the middle. Don't explain everything in your conclusion -- the reader will get it from the writing you have produced."

So maybe I need to be more like Thomas Carlyle and less like John Stuart Mill. More chewy less obvious.

Another problem is that my general worldviews are obvious. Commonplace. Known. If I can, in my entire lifespan, come up with an idea that no one else in the thousands of years that mankind has been thinking, I will have real reason to be proud of my literary abilities.