Nancy Sommers, "I Stand Here Writing"

Sommers' article is first off very different than most of the other essays in Making Sense. Sommers' reads more like something in Bird By Bird. Sommers discusses in a more personal way, the process of writing and conceiving ideas for writing. She talks about how her writing was sort of hit-and-miss before she had any real inspiration. She mentions how in college she was known for her misuse of words and her long hair than her writing. It wasn't until she did her senior thesis on Emerson's "Eloquence," that she had any real inspiration. Also, she continues to give advice for writing throughout the whole essay. One of the more important things she mentions is that, "...to see themselves as places from which ideas originate, to see themselves as Emerson's transparent eyeball, all that they have read and experienced-the dictionaries of their lives-circulating through them." (p.458).