Ever since my days of high school, when writing an essay, my very first thing to do was look at the prompt. From that point on I knew that, as we were always told by our teachers, to start looking for close evidence related to one’s argument. That’s why writing was not really fun at all me because it seemed as if we never had freedom when it came down to structuring any paper. I’m sure school districts and the English department have their reasons for teaching in such way at first, but it was just really boring. The movie ‘Freedom Writers’ came up to me while reading “On Keeping a Notebook” by Joan Didion, because of the struggle those students were able to open up to through their own writing.

Some of the key points Carl H. Klaus mentions, that I was really interested in, were how an essay, for example, should never be something that follows some sort of rules or anything like that. Instead, it should always be about trying out ideas, exploring, and reflecting our own thoughts into which ever format we want it to be in. “Mood and form”, as Klaus mentions, should usually come from within the writers’ heart, depending on what an author is writing about and feeling like at the moment, and that’s because, “Such a wide-open conception of the genre tacitly implies a freedom from any kind of form, which suggests that strictly speaking the essay is an anti genre, a heretical form of writing in the universe of discourse” (xviii Carl H. Klaus). as suggested in this quote, essays do not necessarily need to follow any kind of structure base.

Moreover, Joan Didion mentioned that when writing, remembering events is crucial when identifying important moments in one’s life. “But of course that is exactly it: not that I should ever use the line, but that I should remember the woman who said it and the afternoon I heard it” (5 Joan Didion). Coming back to some of the things Klaus mentions, is that the meaning of a certain moment, signifies it’s importance. In other words, it’s more important to remember people involved in lifetime events with one another, than the actual event.