When writing essays, I sometimes get worked up into such a fervor that I barely know what I am writing. I just let my fingers fly over the keyboard and have the ideas pour from my head. When I go back through the jumble of unpunctuated ideas, I notice a theme running through the writing. I don't try to put a moral in the theme, but invariably it happens. Evaluating the theme and the rest of the writing helps me interpret my own character and decipher my at times bottled-up feelings. In opinion essays, my values show. In stories, the fictional characters express my beliefs.