Rage is not the Only Emotion; Oct. 7 Prompt

Rage is not the Only Emotion

            When I think of emotional writing, Abraham Lincoln writing an angry letter then burning it in the fire comes to my mind. True story. Whenever Abraham Lincoln was angry with someone, he would write them a mean, angry letter; afterwards, he would toss it in his fireplace and burn it. While this is not a direct quote, he told a friend who had questioned his practice that it was better to write all his angry comments in a letter and burn it than it was to send it and cause contention between him and a friend.

            Anyway, I do not normally associate emotional writing with just anger or other negative emotional writing. Emotional writing can be writing while happy, enthusiastic, or playful. The following story comes from my classroom response about my experience with an emotional student.

            “Over the past few weeks of tutoring, I have had the opportunity to tutor a little more than a dozen students. Before our discussion in class regarding emotional students, I had been reflecting on whether I’ve tutored an emotional student or not. While I could not think of any for several minutes, it dawned on me that I had indeed tutored emotional students.

            Last week [first week of October], I tutored a young man who was writing a personal narrative for English 955. In his personal narrative, he explained how he used to party and drink nearly every weekend or more. However, his life changed when he found out that his girlfriend was pregnant. After that he decided to turn himself around and he stopped partying and started thinking about his future child’s life and how important he felt it was to be a good father.”

            While this student was not mad or angry with anyone or anything, he was nonetheless emotional. Fortunately for the both of us, his positive emotions helped him be more open to my suggestions about his essay. After all, one of the pitfalls I know I often fall into when writing in an emotionally compromised state of mind is consistent errors, particularly errors that are preventable if I was calm.

            Often times, I find that most of my own emotional writing is a result of my procrastination. Because of this procrastination, I frequently do not proofread my essays. As a result, my essays usually have some typos, repeats, and other problems that could have easily been avoided had I given myself the proper amount of time to write them.