In the article “Ten Ways to Think about Writing: Metaphoric Musings for College Writing Students” E. Shelly Reid proposes a series of strategies that writers can use to simplify the writing process and to therefore have an easier time writing.
I did not find some of the metaphors listed particularly helpful. For example, the first one felt like sort of a roundabout way to give out pretty simple and straightforward advice. I can remember “Show don’t tell” and “write what you know” without any sort of metaphor. The addition of this figurative language in this case would only confuse me and hurt my existing writing processes.
In contrast, some metaphors were quite useful and helped me to put together some strategies I have tried to use. For example, the Pink Houses and Choruses metaphor was quite insightful. I have struggled at times with providing too many detailed descriptions of things that could likely cause the reader to get distracted and stop reading the piece. The metaphor of seeing a big pink house while driving in a full car and introducing it as you pass it (thus causing everyone else to not actually see it because it has been passed) was very apt to introducing and describing things in written works and I plan on using it in the future when I write.
All in all, I felt that the article was a mostly good if at times somewhat useless set of mental strategies that all college students should at least look into using.
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