Meta-Analysis Response S&F

Coming to Know Your Process as a Writer: Meta-Analysis
After many years of composing five paragraph thesis driven essays from a straightforward 45 min CAPT essay in 6th grade to last year’s research paper, I was taught a formulaic process to write an effective essay. The importance of a thesis sentence, supporting paragraphs with “blended” quotations, and a conclusion that effectively summed up the thesis was drummed into my head. Thus, when assigned to write an exploratory essay, the inverse of a thesis essay, on a novel as complicated as The Sound and the Fury, I struggled with my first draft to escape my habitual writing style and instead attempted to write as if I were thinking through possible answers to a question I was posing about the novel.
As I now look over my first draft and the comments attached to it, I realize that my first draft was a victim of how I usually compose an essay. Despite how much I tried, I could not escape the thesis based approach. I recognized this even when I handed in the essay for I wrote as criticism, “Are there too many examples and is this too thesis based?” In this second draft, I have tried to follow your advice, “TAKE SOME CHANCES.” As you suggested, I flipped around my ending using Juliet’s rhetorical question “What’s in a name?” as my introduction. Instead of ending the first question with an answer, I ended it with the question I was going to explore. Similarly, at the end of the second paragraph, I removed the last line that yes, “reeked of a thesis based essay.” (Just couldn’t contain myself from including it the first time around!) and tried to take some more chances in the third paragraph by concluding with a new question, “If one is tied to his or her name, then is it synonymous with identity formation?”
What about content? Yes, too many examples and as you commented, “sounds too much like a list.” My standard approach to writing is to have lots of examples to support my thesis. I had just recently been discussing how some tribes in Africa name their children and I “stuck” this paragraph about names to proclaim one’s achievements in my first draft trying to make it work. Rereading, I realized this was off topic and yes, “random” (but interesting). Similarly, I felt the Kennedy paragraph on rewriting the second draft unnecessary, so I eliminated that one too and tried to return to The Sound and the Furry and include a paragraph about the name Quentin and the burden that the younger Quentin assumed by being named after her uncle who committed suicide. Trying to again take a chance, I allowed myself to let this lead into the question whether one can form one’s own identity and escape one’s name.
My goals are to be less formulated in my thinking and my writing so I can develop content in a more sophisticated manner. Again this goes back to taking chances with my writing, not always an easy task when you have relied on formulas in the past that has been successful.