My Journey Of Writing

Seventh grade was a drag to my education. I was mentally unstable and extremely introverted. My academics never faltered during this time, and I never had problems with authority. Learning was my first love. It was passion for education that prompted me to experiment outside of school.

Writing is a powerful tool for communication and connection. As an extension and expression of the mind, writing is as much about the mental processes of the author as it is about the final marks laid to paper. As we write, we hold in mind our own thoughts on the work, anticipate the reader’s thoughts, and think both in concrete and abstract ways in order to accomplish the task at hand. Whether an academic research paper, a novel, or text message to friends, writing seeks to engage, persuade, or impress concepts upon an audience. Like language and other art forms in general, the practice of writing is ever-evolving and is subject to cultural and contextual influence, expectations, and conventions. Each writer holds a theory

My literary journey is not an exciting one, there are no major twists, turns or even bumps in the road. I had no major obstacles to overcome in learning how to read or write. But in a way this journey is a metaphor for so many other things in my life, you will learn in the coming pages of my short attention span, failure to stay motivated and my struggles to remain enthused to learn.

It is essential to understand that classes taken in grade school do not give students a full understanding of each subject. With the topic of writing, there will always be a new lesson to learn, an aspect to improve, or a differing way to explain. Author Craig Vetter states in Bonehead Writing, “This is your enemy: a perfectly empty sheet of paper. Nothing will ever happen here except what you make happen.” Each story, essay, or response comes from a writer’s experiences. With each attempt at a new piece comes an underlying story of emotions the writer is facing. Each person’s writing is unique and the ideas people have are related to their past experiences and what they believe to be familiar with when deciding which writing style to use. As a high school student, I have learned many things about writing that helped me become the improved writer I am today, but the most essential advice I have received is practice makes perfect. Although there is no actual perfect way of writing, I have discovered that each essay I write, my writing improves. It is easier to spot mistakes, find areas to improve, and ponder elevated word choice to use.

I have a love-hate relationship with writing. I can write well according to some of my peers; though this could just be from the fact that I seem like the quiet, studious, type who has spent most of her time with the straight "A" nerds who went on to top tier schools such as Stanford. Sometimes I am not too sure of my own writing abilities. On most essays, I get a little bit above average grades and every once in a while I get a few more points than usual. I have noticed that my writing is better when I have to write about a topic I am passionate or know a lot about. The more I have to work with the better. Otherwise, my writing seems poor, forced, and somewhat bland. It usually follows a poor or basic thesis statement and lazy paragraphs. I believe motivation helps me to write better,

During this spring semester, I have grown in many ways as a writer, and a student. I have started to realize, and accept the flaws that I have created in my writing. In the past, I never looked into my writings and saw my problems, and if I did, I did not accept that they were problems. In my writing pieces in the past, I was very hard-headed about what I thought was correct versus what was actually correct. I have also become More familiar with different formatting options on Microsoft Word to create a more professional piece or writing. However, figuring out all the parts of writing and making them work together is the most difficult part of writing.

Writing is something we have been used to since childhood. Beginning to write with just a few words and activities to improve our pendmanship. From easy sentences we all gradually improve our writing, as expected from higher levels of education. However, throughout all this time, many of us have been writing blind. Only writing what is seen an necessary, oblivious to the true skill and precision it takes to actually write quality work. Through the use of Anne Lammott’s article “Shitty First Drafts” and personal experiences, I will advice you, my fellow freshman, on certain a aspect of writing that you may not have known prior to joining the college world, as well as offer some life advice.

From elementary school to high school, I was taught that my writing had to be structured and follow strict criteria. After I arrived in Mr. Mukherjee’s ENG 102 class, I was given the opportunity to express my creative freedom through words and graphical pictures. It can often be difficult and challenging to improve upon my own writing abilities unless motived with an idea in mind. When looking back on my time at ASU, I thought about the goals that I wanted to address for myself and the course goals that my instructor had set for the class. These goals include ones that I had accomplished to the best of my ability and ones that I need to address as well as improve.

Writing is a practice that most of us were taught when we were young. We were taught the basics of grammar, how to form a sentence, conjunction words, how to write paragraphs and more. Although we have learned this skill while growing up and have used the skill every year after entering kindergarten, this does not mean our writing process will ensure the best work. The authors that I chose each encourage their audience to excel in the art of writing in their own way to help with the writing process.

I believe I have made tremendous progress as a writer from the beginning of the year. I feel as though I am a total different person as a writer than I was at the beginning of the year. I know I have made progress in the area of citing sources and knowing whether or not the sources are reliable or not. I think I have come along way from the beginning of this course.

From the early beginning of the school year to the current day, my writing skills and knowledge have improved and broadened over time. If not drastic, the change is noticeable nevertheless. For almost an entirety of eighth grade, assignments of varying difficulty challenged me to a degree. To be frank, some seemed as though they were beyond my comprehension and ability. However, determination amalgamated with knowledge obtained in advance helped me to overcome my doubts, for I exceeded my expectations; surprisingly good grades and comments are a delight, owing to the fact of that I don’t tend to think of myself as being proficient at writing. Consequently, the assignments given to me this school year shaped me into who I am as a writer.

Throughout the course of freshmen year I have developed different skills and opinions on writing. I feel I have created a more mature style of writing and a better understanding of literature. I have changed my view of writing over this semester and acquired a strong liking for it. The importance of writing has become more visible throughout the past few months. Writing is crucial in many aspects of a person’s life. I have grown to be a more powerful and well built writer throughout this course.

My writing has improved greatly over the years. Now, I am able to write much longer papers, my writing is more detailed, my writing is straight, I am able to write in different styles, and my letters aren't shaped weirdly anymore. All and all, my writing has improved a good amount. I still do not enjoy writing that much. I am really enjoying math and science right now. The writing that I do like, is writing about a subject that I choose with no guidelines. My past writing pieces that I have done, have been the personal narrative (in 6th grade), and the researched based writing project (also in 6th grade). Both of those projects I did not enjoy that much, because we worked on those two projects for a long time. Even thought I do not enjoy writing

Throughout the seven weeks that I have taken this writing composition course, I have developed skills to help me improve my own writing. Using the writing process is one of the main focuses in the course. The writing process helps writers develop and revise their essay as they work their way up to creating the final draft that can be presented. Although there are many areas in my own writing where I can get better, I have found that my writing has improved in many ways while practicing using the writing process.

The best writing I’ve ever produced is from last semester I wrote a paper for Sociology on how the movie “Selma” related to what we were learning in class. This is the best writing I’ve produced because I thought long and hard about what I was going to write and ended up making a 100 on the paper which I was very excited about. Another reason is that I’m not particularly exceptional at writing I struggle with what words to use and how to really make my writing mean something to the person reading it, and my teacher left me a comment saying how I had thought outside the box and done very well. When I’m writing, my only fear is that I could be using better words so that’s why after I write a paper I always like to continuously edit it until I’m satisfied. Challenges for me are thinking of what to write I guess you could say that I get writers block and I must take breaks and really think about what I want my paper to convey, but once I get an idea usually I’m and can come up with more ideas it’s just really that first few sentences in a paragraph that get me.