My Experiences As A Writer

A person can read and write a great deal in one day whether they realize it or not. Whether it be texting a friend or reading a textbook for a certain class, you are reading and writing constantly and a daily basis. What surprised me the most about the reading and writing that I did on Sunday was how much I am reading and writing on my phone. Whether I am texting to coordinate plans with a friend for the night or reading a random article I saw while reading a Facebook news feed, I am constantly reading and writing on my phone. I never considered it reading and writing when I used my phone, I just saw it as looking at my phone. Just staring at this four-inch screen for some sort of entertainment. What also surprised me was how much we read without noticing it. You can walk down State Street and you will be constantly reading by looking at stores, posters, or even words on a bus that is passing by. Our eyes and brains are looking at and reading words all the time.

During my past writing experience, I have struggled with formulating and initiating interesting points of discussion, grammar, and transitions. I have often sat down to work on a paper and found myself completely drawing a blank on anything interesting to write about. Whether I am given a specific prompt or general topic to discuss, I constantly struggle with finding a starting point. Once I do, I become too focused on trying to create a poetic sounding paper, rather than focusing on the main discussion points. In some ways, focusing on making my papers poetic have added detail and depth to my writing. However, this frequently distracts me from my papers main theme. One of my biggest drawbacks with writing has always been proper grammar usage.

Lacking experience in writing and reading, English is my most feared subject. It is the one and only vulnerable spot in my in my mind. I hate writing and I hated reading, other than sports pages in the newspaper or sports books. My earliest time that I started reading and writing was extremely abhorrent for me. Sometimes, you could even say that some of these experiences bothered me. It was quite hard because I wasn’t able to focus on what I need to do. I was even struggling to write my own name. The young mind that I had, it was so easy to get distracted on what I need to learn and also accomplish, especially for the future ahead of me.

Growing up I always knew I loved to read. There was a time when I thought reading was just for school not for anything else. When I started to get into sports I started to enjoy reading sports magazines online articles, and that made me enjoy reading about my favorite athletics their stories and how they became what they are and how they did it. Soon enough I saw myself finishing the whole article or the magazine. Part of that made enjoy reading more, and that made like to read other than sports so I started to read about history because I always was fascinated with what happened in the past, but I just never put the time to read about it. Which made me challenge myself to see if I can read a book or an article or something that I wanted to check it out and read about

“Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” Lines like these were always running through my mind when I got involved with my school’s journalism program. It was my sophomore year, and I remember walking into school with my usual, and sometimes excessive, self-confidence. This inflation, I think, was rooted in my new position in the school’s newspaper, editor in training. Hitherto, I was just a reporter and I gained a lot of experience in journalism. “How can I make this story as interesting as possible for my reader?” I would ask myself. I wrote quite a few. From short stories about espionage, to a quick tip on how to heal a sports injury. My experience grew pretty broad, and I was eager to use it all in designing the newspaper as head editor. However, amidst my enthusiasm, there was a failure I didn’t see coming.

One of my most challenging experiences in writing was actually in Virginia Wesleyan College. During my last semester, I was taking Professor Ruh’s ENG 250 class called 19th Century American Women Writers, and we were required to write a few literary analytical essays on novels and short stories that were written by women during the 19th century. Even though the class was very interesting, I was having such a hard time writing my essays that I actually thought I would never be able to pass his class after I failed my first essay. I am usually the type of student that never asks for help because I would often feel intimidated by my teachers. However, I managed to speak up and ask for his help throughout the entire semester and because of that,

My grandmother always told me that education was the key to all success. When I was a little girl, she taught me how to read bible stories and children books. She also taught me basic writing skills. When I was in elementary school, it was always easy for me to read and write, but that changed once I got in high school. Once I got in 10th grade, I always struggled with writing papers. I always felt that everyone could write essays with no problem, while it took me ten minutes to write one sentence. My mind would always go blank when it came to writing papers. I used to be confidence when it came to writing, but now I feel that I will never be able to write a good essay.

1. I've never considered myself much of a writer. I'm expecting that we will be writing often in this course so, one of the goals I'm hoping achieve from English106 is to become more accustomed to writing. Once this is accomplished, it will easily allow me to make further improvements on my writing abilities. My second goal is to become an active reader. Active reading will allow me to pick up an in dept perspective and pose unique questions on the novel. My third goal is to improve on my analysis skills. I often find myself incapable to analyzing a piece of literature to a deeper level. Hopefully discussions during conferences will me to come up with a deeper analysis of passages.

Who comes to mind when defining an exceptional writer? King, Shakespeare, or perhaps Hemingway? Far away from these talented writers I find myself defining a good writer as someone with passion. Throughout the course of my writing experience I feel I’ve transitioned from being inarticulate to being open minded and finally leading me to have a goal on my fluency and creativity.

My first college writing experience consisted of several resumes and cover letters for the various work-study jobs that I applied to. Prior to that, I have constructed numerous essays where I primarily critiqued the literary works of many well-known authors. In junior year of high school, I critiqued the notable poetry of a unique author-- Wislawa Szymborska. The poetry Szymborska wrote was very intricate and rich in subliminal messages. Her poetry usually disregarded the use of rhyme, and instead focused on the sophisticated use of metaphors and allusions. In addition, I continued to evaluate other notable literary works in my senior year of high school. My English teacher instructed me to analyze the poetry of John Donne-- who focused on constructing short poems which reflected complex messages through the use of extended metaphors. I

There is a very real, very great distinction between remembering your first experiences with writing and remembering when you first considered yourself to be a writer.

This year, I was challenged as a writer to graduate from childlike formulaic writing. In Composition I, the first week of class resulted in unnerving changes. We were rid of the impeding constraints of a formula and were never assigned topics. I’ll admit at first it was a little difficult having neither a formula nor assigned topic, but it was also freeing. Being able to freely write has allowed me to grow and not limit my flourishing abilities.

y experience as a writer before this semester of college writing one, was almost non-existent. The best training that I had before this class was an internship while I was preparing to separate from the Army. I had the opportunity to work for a marketing company in Fayetteville, NC, called 219 Group. My Army unit allowed me to do so, and the internship ended up being a terrific experience. Most of my work involved social media marketing, but I was also able to write a few blogs that were posted on clients websites. The blogs were used to improve the websites Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The only basic requirement was to stress certain key words that I had to use repeatedly, and since nobody read the blogs it was a perfect job for an intern. Besides the internship, I did a little writing that was required for my job in the Army. The Army has a particular writing style that is very different from college writing or any essay writing. With very little experience and training in writing before my college writing class, what little writing I managed to do, was not the best quality. I had many faults and difficulties, too many to mention is a short essay. Although, I still have many difficulties as a writer, I have made significant improvements with just one semester of college writing. In the following paragraphs I will mention some of the writing projects that were completed during the semester and the revisions that I have made. I mention in this paper and provide in my

As an academically mediocre student, I never learned very well from teachers, since nothing they were teaching me ever grabbed my attention, unless it was related to my immediate interests at the time. I spent years 1st to 5th grade never enjoyed the writing process, since my mind was always a inattentive place, because of this I never caught onto things like punctuation or proper grammar, causing most of my written assignments to be nothing more than linguistic vomit on paper. It was not until 6th grade rolled around, that my best friend at the time, Catalina, had sent me a link through text. It was to a website with too many words and not enough pictures, so it did not really occur to me what she had sent until I was lying in bed and I finally opened the message backup. I skipped the page, and I noticed it was piece written about characters from a show we both enjoyed, and as I read this story, I noticed how poorly written it was. In the back of my mind, I told myself “Even you could do better than this”, and I felt the slightest burn of confidence in the pit of my stomach, a feeling I had never felt before.

As a writer, I think that I am not as good as I thought I was back in high school. I see myself as a student who tries their best, but makes “B” average work. I have never really taken the time to relate to my papers. I always just wrote what the teacher wanted and handed it in. In my mind, I never really liked trying to explain in full detail what something meant. Back in high school, my teachers always wanted me to explain my writing in such depth that a kindergartener would understand why Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy. Trying to explain my writing was always very tiring. I often would get bored trying to explain and just stop writing and do something else for a while. Most of the time in high school I didn’t like writing. Mainly