Does it matter what you write?

Strange question to start my post for this week...but writing every day is not easy! eventually, you run out of things to say! That`s why I started reading more....the newspaper doesn't really help much, actually. The Washington Post, in fact is dedicating half of its pages to the campaign - which, I admit, is one of the most important things in the country now. I decided to read some of the NY Times pages and I was reading a pretty interesting essay written by Colson Whitehead, "I write in Brooklyn. Get over it." In the essay the writer talks about his job as a writer seen from a Brooklyn perspective. At the beginning he states that writing in rooklyn is not really much different than writing anywhere else, but little by little he goes into those details that make you see why Brooklyn is somehow different. Writing in different places, then, really does make a sort of a difference. Now, a question tormented me while I was taking the TOEFL preparation course a couple of months ago: Does it matter what your write? According to titles, the timing and the importance with which they rate the contents of you essay, I would say it doesn`t really matter. So, how can the TOEFL be a good way to prove your English skills at university level? ecause in real life we mostly write for a purpose...and what is important is the message we want to convey....or is it the way we convey it? Being a good writer, of course, means conveying an important and deep message in a proper, accurate (however exuberant) way. What aout eing a good TOEFL taker? Is it of any importance at all what is inside of our heads? What we think and believe? No...what matters is the correctness, accuracy, cohesion and coherence of our English. Well, I guess this is what people want to know: regardless of what we want to say, can we at leat say it properly and in a way that it can be understood? Now, I have a question: how can we be motivated to write an essay, if we don`t have anything to say on the subject? Or if we have to write things we don`t really believe?Or if we do not have enough time to put our thoughts together in a way that they will mean something? Is this fair to the students? Do we not deserve to think and plan our essays before start writing them? many many doubts occurr to me when I think of the TOEFL. However, I still want to get good grades on the test...corss your fingers, ok?