I am not a fast writer. Even in a limited time situation, I still find myself spending too much time trying to recall specific words. As a general rule I've found that four paragraphs is my ideal. Knowing that today's (yesterday's?) essay would be even faster paced, I decided to go down to three paragraphs. In spite of this, I didn't reach my concluding paragraph.
That said, I feel like I got at least the basic structure of my ideas onto paper. The points I really wanted to press were that communication naturally imposes restrictions upon "free thought" (meaning, what the mind would think about without direction). Different pieces of writing have different limitations. Pride and Prejudice's limitation is that it is a story with a very specific plot. All of Elizabeth's thoughts are required to be related to her developing relationships, or else the plot would be diluted. Montaigne had more freedom in that he was writing about his own mind, giving him liberty to jump between topics. However, even the lengthier chapters only give an overview of his thoughts. It's safe to assume that the reader does not know Montaigne as well as he knew himself simply by reading a few pages. Given more time to write, I would have developed the difference between what I was calling "free thought" and "restricted thought", and how one more accurate shows the vastness of the mind. As it is in my essay, the concept is vague and conceptual, lacking much concrete evidence (due in part to the fact that I was fleshing out the idea on the fly). In the entire essay, I think I included two examples, one from each book. With the limited time, I felt it was more important to communicate my core ideas than dig up examples. More time to build up support for my arguments would have made them much more credible. To be specific, I really wanted to include a sentence referencing Montaigne's thumb chapter to illustrate the greater freedom he had in writing than Austen.
After I left it occurred to me that I had all but forgotten David Foster Wallace's quote. I made a passing mention of it in my introductory paragraph, then jumped off to my own thoughts. I should have tied my arguments back to more clearly express my agreement with the quote. I focused much more on comparing Montaigne and Austen.
The interruption actually helped my thought process. Due to a less than ideal sleep the night before, I began writing without much vigor. When we left for the library I had a little over two sentences written and no idea what direction I was going to take the essay. During the walk down I didn't really think about the essay much, but the short time away from it was enough to clear my head. As soon as I started writing again, I came up with a reasonable idea to base the essay on. It should be noted that this was a very particular circumstance for me. Most times I would hate the interruption, but I was so out of it today that the short walk went a long way in organizing my thoughts. Of course, the time restriction was still inconvenient.
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