Holly's book response

Initially, I found the style of The Courage to Write to be a little offputting. I personally rarely suffer from the fear of the white page, especially in the field of historical writing, and found Ralph Keyes' bald-faced admission of writer's anxiety to not apply to my experience. For me, if I craft an essay well in its structure and goals before I begin, I am unlikely to encounter the paralysis of not knowing what on earth to write about, because I have already decided what I am going to write about. However, after I wrote my first five pages for Honors College, I began to see how Keyes' work did apply to me. Keyes spends a fair amount of time discussing how authors find the courage to continue writing once they have begun, and I found myself becoming distracted from my writing after I had been at it only two hours. I know that this book will be helpful in reminding me that the process of long-form writing is hard, and that it is only with the determination to continue working and parsing through my research that I will be ultimately successful.

Having now written about my thesis and having written sections of my thesis, I feel I am better aware of the pitfalls I will face throughout the year as I continue to write the paper. I now find it easy to talk about my thesis on a very superficial level (the one-minute pitch version of this paper is a breeze). However, I now also know clearly how large my project is, and that I have significantly more work to do in going through my research and deciding how each part either fits or is unnecessary. I have, in many respects, more research than I need for this project, and so need to be selective in using only the research that feels necessary -- I cannot allow myself to get distracted and try to make everything in my notes fit into the paper.

As for Pyne's Voice and Vision, I plan to delve into it more substantively as I write more of the text of my thesis over this year, but I will be using his guiding principles as I go. Particularly, I foresee using his idea that style should do work. My writing style is very conversational and makes my voice fairly apparent, but I often struggle balancing this style with more conventional "academic" writing. Pyne's work was helpful in telling me to embrace the balance between the two, and to acknowledge how "style" can be academic. One of the guiding principles I am most conscious of as I set out to write my thesis this year is that I need to balance style with analysis. I like my writing style, and have consistently received the feedback that others like it as well. I write texts that flow, and so I generally receive little criticism on my substance because my texts are pleasant to read. If I am self-aware in writing for substance and academia as well as for style, understanding that one does not preclude the other, I think my writing will be all the stronger.