[Voodo Chile]

When someone asks me if i'm a good writer i have a really hard time answering this. I personally believe i can write some pretty out of there stories. give me a bunch of random words and i can write a story about them. I used to be one of the best story writers in my primary school because of the weirdness of them and my ability to just write massive stories in a short amount of time. It just came naturally. The thing is...is that i cant write anything else. See i can write a made up story and take up pages and pages but when it comes to say writing an essay on something i just fizz out. I noticed this recently.
I wrote something for this competition. I ended up writing 5 pages in just over an hour. It was a made up fairtale and had to include these certain characters. It was easy as shit and i actually had to edit out whole sections of the story because it was too long.
A few days later. I am faced with a catcher in the rye exam. 3 choices

"Dilemmas and decisions are the main focus of novelists"

"It is the settings of a novel which generate all its thematic considerations"

"the narrator must be a critical thinker if the point of view of the text is to be engaging for a modern audience".



Number two i didn't even understand, it might as well have been algebra. Number 3, whats the point of view of the text. I didnt know books could have their point of view of its storyline. I dont think i understood this one
I end up writing a barely 2 pages and weak essay which failed. And even then i felt as if i was drawn out. I just run out of ideas when it comes to writing this sort of stuff. I chose the first one and basically wrote "well if there were no obstacles or decision-making problems that the character must face then the storyline cant really move. Everyone makes decisions. The only time you wouldn't be making decisions would be when you are asleep and that wouldn't be very interesting to write about".
And from the start i could obviously see my whole take on the question as a fail. But thats all i could think of. I personally didnt think they were good questions. Did not provoke thought at all. I just looked at it and go, 'well its common sense, i cant really elaborate further on this idea because thats all there is to it'.

So in this way you could say i'm a skin and bones writer. So brief that its shocking. It used to be me who was going away writing while the people were just staring at the paper and drawing dots with no ideas in their head. Now its completely the opposite

Anyone else had this before?

[xGravity]

did you read the book?

haha no jk, but i understand where you are coming from. my teacher once told us to get into groups and ask critical thinking questions about a film we watched and i thought it'd be simple. turned out, all my questions held no regards to any part of their discussions. i struggle with anything involving logic. T___T

[Slogo]

Sounds like the pressure of an essay exam! Man, I love Catcher in the Rye...anyways... with writing, and I like essay exams a lot more than a paper on your own. A lot of work goes into a paper of your own.There's just so many directions and ways to go...you have to come up with a thesis, documenting with quotes and works cited, and doing all the research....however, to me anyways, an essay exam picks the thesis out for you and it's usually based on something discussed in class. You don't have to type or document or even use really formed paragraphs. It all has to be done under pressured within a time limit, and there's no procrastination and guilt...lol.

Other than writing for school, there's what seems like creative writing like you do...it seems like a totally different free style...I don't do too much of this....except in poem format or fake stories about fake musicians and their tracklists...the latter, kind of cheesy and geeky as you can get. Some people are good writers in different styles maybe....

I am awful with logic myself...I spent hours on papers for English 101 and a Politics class to a C grade! It felt terrible....but then in an intro to lit class, my professor said she was in love with my papers....so writing styles vary quite bit sometimes.