Essay

I am currently writing an essay on William Faulkner: his life, work, and awards. It is no easy task and is a tedious process when I must pay close attention to at least twenty different grammatical forms while composing. With all the guidelines I have to take into account before I finally submit the essay, I feel there is hardly any room for my own writing style. Sometimes I wonder if some rules are just for political correctness. I realize some of it, like the citations, are for legalities. Most of my teachers keep saying things like, "When you are in a university,...."

My mind is currently swimming (or drowning) with these terms, phrases and rules: ellipsis,... flagged quotation,... son of citation machine,... publishers,... copyrighted,... date in which you obtained the website,... fifth space indentation,... L7 (in my writers handbook),... see page 389 for the rules on what to do in case there is no page number, author, or publication date,... MLA formatting,... May, June, and July are NOT abbreviated in MLA format citation all other months use only three letters and a period....and most importantly, after all rules are stated, DO NOT MEMORIZE THESE RULES. I believe it is a little too late for that.

I am so OCD about it all that I am afraid to forget a rule. Yes, yes, I hear my teacher's voice telling me, "Do NOT worry about the grammar until AFTER you have written the first draft." Well, I guess should have written my first draft before she said that in class. :-) Truly, I am one who has become paranoid about forgetting a punctuation mark, how to quote in text, and whether I will find an author of a citation or not. And what is that rule about URLs? One cite mentions that website citations require URLs while our writer's guidebook tells us an URL is not required. Another source tells us it is up to our instructor.

Ok, for real, I just need to take a chill pill and throw all rules out the window and just get it down. Haha! "Good luck with that one, Dorry!"

Ok, back to work...after a coffee break! ;-)