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Richard Marius: My Idea Of Keeping An Open Mind

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Developing an essay includes going through a process which we define differently. To be able to establish a well-developed essay, Richard Marius believes there is a process we must go through. This includes writing multiple drafts before finalizing a final draft. In college mostly all students, if not all are required to write papers for their classes. By analyzing our writing styles, I concluded that we have similar but different approaches. For example, we both believe that keeping an open mind leads to new thoughts; but the way we differ is based on the multiple drafts we write and how he believes that distractions lead us to forget our initial thoughts. To illustrate the differences and similarities between Marius and my writing I’m going …show more content…

For instance, he believes that having an open mind creates new thoughts, and that writers discover that their original thoughts change throughout their writing (Marius, 91). This is similar to my writing process because I focus on an idea, and when I’m halfway through it, I tend to focus more on meeting a requirement whether its page length or word count, I slowly start to drift away from the actual topic. This occurred when I was writing my paper for my Math 110 class, I found myself having all the information but when I was two pages in I realized that I missed information. So, I started to include information where I believed it best fit, and then I realized that I was overwriting. When I overwrite, I lose control of my topic which leads my essay to be unstructured and all my information tends to be …show more content…

To some extent, distractions may lead us to forget our initial thought. Marius holds the idea that once writers begin to write, they should continue to write for at least one hour writing. He also believes that getting up to get water or making a phone call causes distractions which lead us to forget what we were writing about (Marius, 91,94). When I write, I tend to get up from my computer when I no longer have ideas. Such as my Math 110 essay, I spent unnecessary hours on the computer because I would take breaks when I believed it was necessary. Coming back from my breaks I read where I last left off and instead of losing my train of thought, I would come back to new thoughts. In a way taking breaks give me time to refresh my brain and focus on other things beside

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