Essay on My Struggles With Becoming a Writer

A semester has passed since I started college and my journey of becoming a better writer. It has been a very important semester for my future college career, and I would not be here without the things I have accomplished. The composition program has really helped me to prepare for what college writing is all about. Now standing here and looking back I could not imagine how it would be without that class. I believe my English, and my writing is better than it has ever been, and all thanks to the composition program.

Ever since I was in elementary school, I have had a strong fascination with literature. Overtime, I had a plethora of books lining my bookcases and barely had room for any more. Reading was a necessity to me and it still is to me today. I eat, sleep, and breath literature because I feel like it’s essential to my academic career. Literature does many wonderful things like, teach me about life lessons, transport me to a new world that I have only dreamed about going to, and discover new vocabulary.

The art of writing is a complex and difficult process. Proper writing requires careful planning, revision, and proofreading. Throughout the past semester, the quality of my writing has evolved significantly. At first, I struggled with the separation of different types of paragraphs, and I found writing them laborious. Constant practice, however, has eliminated many of my original difficulties, and helped to inspire confidence in my skills. As a collegiate writer, my strength lies in my clear understanding of the fundamentals of writing, while my primary weakness is proofreading my own work.

Prior to my development of routine introspection and, consequently, maturation, I wrote not to encapsulate my ever-growing discomfort towards life, but rather to gain praise and acknowledgement for my efforts in writing. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I sat on the floor of my kindergarten classroom criss-cross applesauce-style as my teacher, Mrs. Glickman, asked the class to write a short story and to provide an illustration to accompany it. With smudged and disorderly speckles of graphite sprawled across my paper, I managed to write a story in my signature chicken-scratch handwriting. The story was relatively simple, about a girl who had thought she was a hideous monster until she looked into a river reflection and realized she was beautiful. I even drew (or attempted to draw) a beautiful girl for the second part of the assignment. At the next school assembly, Mrs. Glickman granted me a sky-colored paper, reading “Award of Recognition: Kiana Lucin, for her creative writing and exemplary drawing skills.” From this point on, I prided myself in writing, and excelled

From writing thoughtful poems to research papers, I have experienced composing a diverse portfolio of literary analysis and criticisms throughout the school year. I started out the year writing minimally. By the end of the year, I noticed I was able to express my ideas and thoughts in a more clear and concise way on paper. Ultimately, each composition allowed me to widen my horizons as a writer and see how I could improve as a writer.

My English Literature major has helped me to achieve an outstanding level of appreciation, enjoyment, and knowledge of both American and British Literature. As a high school AP English student, I struggled through great works like Hamlet and To the Lighthouse. My teacher’s daily lectures (there was no such thing as class discussion) taught me merely to interpret the works as critics had in the past. I did not enjoy the reading or writing process. As a freshman at Loras, I was enrolled in the Critical Writing: Poetry class. For the first time since grade school, my writing ability was praised and the sharing of my ideas was encouraged by an enthusiastic and nurturing professor. Despite the difficulty of poetry, I enjoyed reading it.

“ There are your radish seeds everyone.” Said Mr. Susick. The whole class looked around at each other with a blank confused face. It was the first day of junior year in my English class. Mr. Susick started talking about how our first assignment would be to grow radishes. We were all thinking, how in the world does gardening relate to English class. I had heard about this project from previous juniors but none of them said what the real reason was. All Mr. Susick said was that you need to let the project teach itself and get into nature. He left us with one bit of information along with the requirements to start. The main goal of the assignment was to extract your own universal truths. For the first time in English class,

There is a multitude of jobs and careers I want to have, as some of you may know, but I think we’re only allowed to talk about one. However, there is one job in particular that I know that I’ll do, whether I’m paid for it or not. That job is writing. Not only do you need language skills, but I believe that you will need creativity and an immense amount of patience in order to be a successful writer of any sort.

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.

I’m not a notable writer, nor have I really wanted to join the writing industry. However, I have been interested in other people’s writing. From their deep meanings, content, and different formats/styles. It’s a wondrous creation made from within our imagination and experiences. It has inspired me to write too. I’ve been writing most of my life that it has become a necessity. And now from my past experiences with writing, I try my best to improve my skills as a writer for the future.

Finding the motivation to sit down and write, or read has always been a challenge for me. The amount of books I have actually read all the through in the past few years of my life is slim to none. Really the only time I will read is for a school assignment, or if it’s required for a job. As I grow older I am starting to realize the importance of good reading, and writing skills. Having the ability to write what needs to be written, whether than just what you want to write can be difficult. I have always been the best at writing essays when there is a lot of freedom to write what you want. The times where I have to follow a particular structure is when coming up with original ideas can be a huge challenge.

I define myself as a writer. To that end, I spent fifteen years developing my talents with classes, workshops and contests that give feedback. The last class focused on description. The peer reviews I have participated have contributed to my writing and editing skills. Although unpublished, I have a bachelor’s degree in Publication Management and currently service on the Board of The Atlanta Writers Club, a hundred-year-old organization that help authors with the craft and business of writing.

Anais Nin, a Cuban author, once said, “We write to taste life twice, in the moment

I don’t consider myself a very good writer. I write when I am made to or when I have something that I need to say that I can’t just tell someone. I keep a diary. Usually my diary is just a record of what I have done that day. It’s not so much about my feelings. I don’t really like talking about my feelings, usually because most of the time I am confused about what exactly I am feeling. I tend to keep the feelings that I do have to myself, to protect myself from getting hurt.

Writing has always played a huge role in my life. I’ve been reading writing for as long as I can remember as I have an immense love of reading. This love would grow into a love for writing as well; I still stumble upon journals and writings from my five-year-old self about the happenings in my kindergarten class. As time would go on I would discover academic writing, and how to convey my thoughts on what was the topic of student that particular year or semester in my schooling. Later, writing would become a constant for me, and a comfort; I was known to my friends as always having a journal, and a pen on my person. I learned to write down my feelings and my thoughts, song lyrics that were in my head, reflections for the day. I learned how