Can someone help me to paraphrase this sentence.

Question

Title of the article is "Becoming a Writer" by Russell Baker

Sentence:

"I hated the assignments to turn out "compositions," and went at them like heavy labor, luckluster paragraphs that were agonies for teachers to read and for me to write."

I would appreciate any help

Answer 1

I would rather write creatively than by a standardized formula.

This would be what I would call the "gist" of that sentence. However, the original sentence is much more graphic and interesting.