“轰”的一声，老师兴致勃勃的将一摞新打印出来的ESSAY放在了我的桌上。这是关于《蝇王》的文学解析。为了鼓励我们这群十年级的学生尽快摆脱掉对文学作品本身具有的郁闷心情并激发我们的思维，老师决定选取他最喜欢的几个章节大声朗诵给我们听。他向我们保证，只要我们好好研究阅读这几个章节，一定能够成为很有能力的作家或文学作品鉴赏大师。我仔细的听着时而像一位严肃的文学批判者那样羡慕孩童时期的天真美好，时而又谴责人类那颗“深海之珠”的恻隐之心。几篇ESSAY听完后，我整个人呆若木鸡，完全被作品里的深刻犀利的言语震住了。随即又感到万分的恐惧，因为我的作品远远达不到这个水平。老师的最后一句话深深的刺痛了我那颗天真的文学创作的心灵，“如果你想在这门课上取得A（优秀），必须写成像这个样子。”
这句话就像体内的寄生虫一样，啃噬着我的灵魂。“像这样写。”
在此之前，我一直认为我是写作天才。我很小就与写作结下了缘分。6岁开始写自传，共6页装订成册，内附铅笔画。我的启蒙老师是Berenstain（贝贝熊系列）、Cleary and Carroll和狄更斯作品。尽管我父母英文说的都不好，我还是很用心的去听。在我看来，写作与文学创作就是信手拈来的事情，我还写了很多的小诗和短故事，还有粗制滥造的ESSAY。我的作品风格就像野孩子一样，自由自在、无所顾忌。我的思维就像洪水一样，无边无际，无所谓段落和文章结构，想在哪里停止就停止。
这种状态一直持续到我读8年级。一次，老师用木板拍打一个双层汉堡，这个汉堡马上就变得层次鲜明，老师告诉我们这就是“Jane Schaffer段落结构”（这是由Jane Schaffer发明的，全文共分4部分：中心话题,Topic Ss 细节描写,Concrete details 评价,Commentary 总结,Conclusion。这是美国中学里常用的写作ESSAY的方法）。在接下来的两年里，我一直沿用这种写作方法。第一篇成型的文章即是关于Mildred D. Taylor。先列举其人生的每个阶段，通过具体的细节组织最后是评价。起初，我很反感这种写作思路和模式，但是，慢慢的，我就能够驾轻就熟了。我为自己感到骄傲，我以为我战胜了文学创作中最大的障碍。
现在我升入了十年级，开始接触文学批判主义课程。老师告诉我们，不管文章结构组织的多么灵巧，如果不注意保持文章的风格、分析文章整体架构以及正确的选词用词，写出来的文章没有灵魂没有思想，一切都是白搭。那天老师给我们读了几篇《蝇王》章节后，我才发现自己的作品不够成熟，不够深刻。虽然那时我被惊到了，但是，写作的魅力却丝毫不减。胆怯的心理很快就转化成了对文学作品的狂热的追求。我修正了之前对文学作品的幼稚想法开始转变角度，聚焦在新的比较难以捉摸的高质量的追求中。
如今的我还是疯狂的追求特立独行的写作风格。我经常连续几个小时的坐在电脑旁，敲击键盘，删除，敲击，再删除，来来回回，希望点击出一连串完美的字符组合。当然，我不是每时每刻都能保持着对文学创作如此强烈的热忱，但是，无论心情有多么沮丧，我都不允许自己绝望。无论创作过程多么艰难痛苦，我都秉持着一个作家该有的态度和精神。一旦发现一篇好的文章，我会带着一颗虔诚的心理尊重它，用诗歌的形式去抒写它去领略它过人的智慧。我告诉自己：“如果你想成为一位作家，就像这样子写作。”
分析
这篇ESSAY的写作足以看出作者的过人之处。作者不是将重心放在自己写作多么牛逼而是将落笔放在写作道路的漫长与艰难上。作者选用急剧讽刺效果的词语表达了自己离成为一名优秀的作家相差太大。“这句话就像寄生虫一样，啃噬着我的灵魂”此句语言形象精准。这样一句简单“暴力”的抒情立刻就会让招生官觉得作者对于写作的狂热感。
作者描写自己的写作热情是循序渐进的学习和热爱，不是炫耀自己的写作技术抒发自己多么热衷文学，不给自己留有任何提升空间。相反的，作者在ESSAY里表现的始终是自己不断的发现新问题，学习新的写作技巧，不断成长提升。作者向我们完美的展现了自己绝对不会放弃写作。确实，真正的热情是不会消逝的。它会驱使人不断提升，做到比之前更好。这也是作者想要在文中极力表达的意思。
—Esther Yi
原文参考：
(10)MICHELLE QUACH—“UNTITLED”
The packet of published essays fell with a smug thud onto my desk. It was a collection of literary analyses on Lord of the Flies, and my teacher, who delighted in both aggravating the fears and stimulating the minds of his tenth-grade students, decided to read his favorite excerpts aloud to us. He promised that by studying the experts, we too could become competent writers and analyzers of literature. I listened carefully as one critic deplored readers who “subscribed to the cult of childhood innocence,” and as another censured those who believed in the “romantic chimera” of mankind’s essential goodness. After several essays, I sat speechless, dazzled by this show of eloquence and profundity, yet terrified as every old perception of the merits of my own writing slipped gleefully out of reach. My teacher’s final proclamation was the last stab to my literary naiveté: “If you want to get an A in this class, write like that!”
The command slithered into my mind like a self-satisfied parasite and, settling in, sank its teeth into my soul. Write like that.
Up until then, I’d been fairly certain that writing was one of my talents. My affair with words began early in life. At six, I penned my first autobiography, a six-page booklet illustrated with solemn pencil drawings and held together with nine staples along the side. My teachers were Berenstain and Barrie, Cleary and Carroll, Dickens and Dahl—so even though my parents never spoke much English, I still managed to pick up an ear for the language. Writing seemed so naturally easy and creatively liberating that I simply took off, dabbling in poems and short stories, churning out even school essays with flourish and pride. I wrote the way a wild child runs: freely, ignorantly, and recklessly. My ideas spilled like water into careless paragraphs and, unrestrained by any sense of structure, sometimes sloshed ebulliently off the page.
The first time I ran into any trouble was when my eighth-grade teacher slapped a laminated hamburger on the board. The hamburger format, also known as the formulaic Jane Schaffer writing style, entered my life, and I was to live under its tyrannical rule for the next two years. My first effort, a paper on Mildred D. Taylor, resulted in choppy paragraphs that sliced up details of her life into ungraceful—though admittedly efficient—servings of concrete detail and Commentry. Initially I hated and denounced the system, but gradually, in spite of myself, I absorbed its greatest asset into my writing: structure. Soon, I could pride myself on the fact that I had perfected the hamburger essay. I thought I had conquered the greatest obstacle to literary merit.
Then I found myself sitting in tenth-grade English, pummeled out of complacency by a stack of literary criticism. My teacher that year would not be satisfied with empty essays, no matter how deftly organized. Instead, he emphasized style, analysis, and use of language. The day he read us those Lord of the Flies analyses, I realized that I now had to strive for a more mature, insightful level of writing that I had never known existed, much less achieved, before. The thought bewildered me, but the brilliance of the published essays was unbearably enticing. My timid wonder transformed into a fanatical desire to emulate. Setting a new goal for myself, I shed my innocent misunderstandings about good writing and focused on capturing this new, more elusive quality of true excellence.
Today, the pursuit of exceptional writing still consumes me. I often sit in front of the computer for hours, typing, deleting, and retyping, trying to hit that perfect pitch with every word. Needless to say, I do not often achieve the kind of quality that I strive for, but as discouraging as this is, I can’t seem to tear myself away. No matter how slow and painful the writing process is for me, in my mind I always hold the writer’s craft in the highest regard. Whenever I find a piece of great writing, I sigh with rhapsodic admiration at every mot juste and genius image, every poetic description and unveiled wisdom—and I tell myself, “If you really want to be a writer, write like that!”
COMMENTARY
For starters, this is an essay that performs the very task it speaks of with great talent. This applicant focuses on the hard path toward becoming a better writer, and indeed, she displays a remarkable facility with language that, ironically, manifests itself most clearly when she describes the disillusioning recognition of her insufficiencies as a writer. For example, a particularly strong sentence is, “The command slithered into my mind like a self-satisfied parasite”—the language is precise and vivid. A simple, yet powerful, trick: Through the very strength of her writing, the applicant is able to convince admissions officers that she means it when she says she loves writing and seeks to become better at it.
Moreover, the applicant depicts her passion for writing as one that rides a constant learning curve. The author does not simply wax poetic about her love for and talent with writing, thereby leaving little room for growth—instead, this is an essay about confronting the fact that she can always become a better and richer writer, and that this is a pursuit she will gladly adopt as her own. The writer successfully conveys that she will not rest at mediocrity. Indeed, a true passion is never complacent—it strives to develop and improve, to grow into something even better than its previous state. And this is a principle the writer displays to great effect in this essay.
—Esther Yi
