Adaptation
“The Samurai” Adaptation- “Cut it out!”
We all get attached to parts of our writing that at first seem great but later on hinder the rest of our work. The chapter “The Samurai”, in Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, delves into the topic of letting go. It is important, that while you can come up with what you think is an exceptional analysis at the time that you are able to go over your original thoughts and be able to cut out and be open to changing things that may not fit on a second glance. For an analysis of a piece of literature or a scientific paper it is better to go straight to the point instead of fluffing your writing with unnecessary fillers that will guide you away from the idea of what you are trying to analyze. Once you have your topic at hand and are able to write about it then you can see what details are important and which you can leave out. For example, say you are analyzing Victors character in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and his inability to take responsibility for his actions and somehow stray upon his obsession with old style natural philosophy. Somehow you have started analyzing his obsession with mystic science and totally abandoned your original thesis. If you only interject a line or two that was not supporting your argument or analysis then you should probably bring yourself to eliminate them and continue on with evidence that will make your analysis stronger instead of straying the reader’s attention to other details you did not intend them to stray to. If your second analysis is growing to great lengths and you find yourself more engaged and ready to provide evidence after evidence for this new thesis then you should probably throw away the original thesis and build with this new idea. The purpose of “The Samurai” is to be able tell yourself it is okay to start over and change ideas. The strategy is to be honest with what works and what can be taken out. Another example would be if you find a piece of evidence that supports your analysis. It could be a beautiful line in the novel and you decided to write your analysis surrounding that one line. Later, you find that perhaps that line was not as strong of evidence as you originally thought but you find something much simpler that works. You have to bring yourself to be able to make that swap that will contribute the most to your writing, because I know personally I have fallen for beautiful lines that I thought would work but realize that I only wanted them in there because they were beautiful and not because they would support my analysis. It all boils down to edits. Be able to revise and tear apart your paper to get down to the significant aspects that will deliver the message you are trying to convey. If you find yourself getting lost and meandering from your analysis just think of a samurai and “cut it out!”
Reflection
As I was adapting Natalie Goldbergs “The Samurai” chapter I found myself actually following the tips and advice she gave while writing. I was able to force myself to stay focused on the task at hand and just write instead of overthinking and letting my mind wander to those chores around the apartment. For what I understood in “The Samurai” it is about letting go of things in your writing that just are not good. I feel like for a class that analyzes literature the advice she gave could be easily applied. The ability to edit a creative paper is just as necessary as editing an analysis paper. Students or anyone aiming to analyze literature should be open to improvements and editing. Sometimes a passage you want to use could be suited better in another part of your work or not at all. Adapting is a useful skill because it can save headache and time on a topic that just is not working. The purpose is to grow as a writer and you cannot grow without the ability to change to your environment and such is with writing. I realized that using what you have is just as helpful as completely starting from scratch- being able to move forward even if you must step back.
