When She Tries To Build A Cathedral Analysis

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Recommended: Decision making in essay form

. I found the editing process to be very important. Steve May states that the writer who doesn’t revise their work is like “a builder who tries to build a cathedral…by tossing a few bricks, perhaps a fragment of a plan, out of the window of a moving van” (May 105). May is suggesting that throwing the first words or ideas down on paper won’t necessarily be the best ones. Writing is a decision-making process, a series of choices you have to make. The following is an unedited flash fiction passage from my portfolio:
‘A girl suddenly rushed towards us. I almost didn’t expect it. Her face appeared very bright red and wet, shiny streaks were visible under her puffy eyes. There were pieces of torn paper held tightly in her hands. I tried to avoid eye contact as she passed between me and my sister. Mary gave me an awkward look. I peered down at the white, crumpled envelope again. After two and a half months of waiting, it was time to read my results.’ …show more content…

When we look at the sentence ‘A girl suddenly rushed towards us,’ there are ways of making it less wordy. The words ‘suddenly,’ and ‘rushed’ both express the same idea. Saying ‘sudden’ includes the idea of being rushed. A more succinct version of this sentence might be: ‘A girl rushed towards us.’ This is a complete edited version of the passage:
‘A girl rushed towards us. Her face appeared bright red and wet, shiny streaks under her puffy eyes. Pieces of torn paper were held tightly in her hands. I avoided eye contact as she passed. I peered at the envelope again. After two and a half months of waiting, it was time to read my

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