Informal Writing by Lorraine Cheung

Gathering my thoughts on “writing”
Writing, to me, is a way to express oneself. It is a record of what is going on in our minds. It can be about very personal issues in daily lives, like how your professor gave you a C and how mad you are. It can also be a tool to express one’s opinions on serious, profound issues, such as global warming and female politicians.
I learnt the huge difference between research papers and normal argumentative essays. They two types are similar in the sense that you need evidence to proof a certain belief. However, in the basic type of argumentative essays, we take a stand point and try to include evidences that support our view, so as to persuade others to take our side; while research papers are used to study issues in a thorough and objective perspective.
After taking this course, I know myself better now than I used to be. I realized that I am a person of strong beliefs and I like expressing my own opinions. This is the first time I felt that I am weak at researching for materials for reference. While working on my research paper, I faced a high degree of difficulty in finding creditable and helpful resources, especially on the internet.
Currently, I feel that I am stuck in a stage where I have slowed down improving and it is harder to move onto a higher level. In general, I’ve always been told that I am good at structuring essays and I don’t have too much grammar problems. Yet, I go through a lot of struggle in attempting to make my writing interesting. Even though I always have very solid and powerful points, sometimes I put them in a too “mechanical” way that may bore my readers.
I tried numerous times to keep a diary, but I just couldn’t, because I don’t feel like “talking to myself” and I don’t like the fact that there is no audience except myself. I had a blog in English and now I often write on my Japanese blog. Even to my own surprise, I am able to continue posting.
For me, the most enjoyable part of writing is not the actual writing process, but when I get feedbacks from my readers. I enjoy reading comments on my blog very much. In fact, their comments are motivations that encourage me to continuing on writing, since keep updating a blog is such a painful thing. I usually spend a minimum of one or two hours every time I write a new post.
While language and writing are closely related, language sometimes becomes a barrier when we try to express ourselves. And it should not be. Luckily, I speak four languages and I always find it very useful to combine different languages to truly convey the message I’m trying to send out. And that means my readers have to be multilingual, too.
Ultimately, writing is very important because our brains can only remember so much. If we keep a written record of our thoughts and happenings in our lives, and read it again after five or ten years, we will be surprised that we don’t even remember something we felt so strongly before.