Personal Narrative: How I Become A Better Writer

Chiefly, I tend to overcomplicate tasks in a variety of applications: writing, working, studying and so on. This proclivity to overcomplicate things makes my writing oftentimes verbose. Verbosity can diminish the impact of writing, especially by disengaging the audience and losing their focus. Additionally, another weakness I have in writing is of the preliminary writing process. I struggle to begin a piece of writing. A painstaking process, I often write the primary draft of a piece five or six times before I reach a product I am willing to work with. This likely is directly related to my tendency to complicate my work. Lastly, my writing also suffers from too singular of a focus. During the writing process, I tend to fixate on a singular viewpoint of a topic. I believe that my writing would be benefit by developing the ability to step back from a topic and evaluate it through a broader lens and looking at the extensive context of the issue I am working with. Allowing myself to this more often would provide far more developed thought and perspective in my writing.

I have some strengths and weaknesses as a writer that I am aware of, but honestly it is not an easy task for me. My only strength in writing is my thought process, not the actual writing itself. I have never considered myself to be good in the subject of writing, but I always try my best.

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.

When I am writing narratives, I use many different characteristics to describe the characters, and when I was watching Ted Talks and doing the chart, it made me think about the speaker’s features and how I can use them to describe my characters better. Also, I use my time efficiently I don’t fool around and talk to others. I get right to my work and complete it. I accept writing criticism very well too, I use it to improve my writing. Another strength that I have in writing is I have excellent spelling, and I punctuate very well. Likewise in writing, I also have my strengths in reading. While reading a novel, I can illustrate what is going on in the book or the story in my mind which helps me understand that story more. It helps me to ‘get into’ the book. Also, another strength that I have in reading is that I can annotate and get information out of books very well. That, coupled with the fact that I am very good at figuring out hidden messages or finding the theme of the book. Notes I take from the novel help when I am flipping back through the book to support my theme or message with evidence.

At the moment, there are only 5 articles available for a 3-star rating, which isn't much. I was wondering, can I apply to any teams at this stage? Are there other ways to find additional work?

Most of the time when someone is told to write a paper, they read the directions and follow the prompt. But when told to think about strengths and weaknesses of how they actually write those papers, it is a good eye opener to realize what needs to be improved and what is already superior quality. For my writing, being a perfectionist is in many ways a strength, but it can also be a weakness. My perfectionism affects all of my other strengths and weaknesses in my writing.

Over the course of this semester, I have learned many things to improve my writing. Having taken the course before, this semester has been an excellent opportunity to expand on my existing knowledge. Although I had written many essays before, there is still much to be learned and improved. Two factors of writing that I had learned or improved on this semester were transitions/topic sentences and how to properly structure a conclusion paragraph.

Would you believe me if I told you that masters of any art still practice the skills that got them to where they are now? This might not come as a surprise to most, but success and perfection is measured in time. Repetition is key when talking about mastering skills. There are many steps that have helped me through my writing process. Thinking planning, and revision are skills that have made me a better writer. These skills are crucial for becoming a better writer because it decides the volume of my work and makes sure the reader understands my intent.

During this semester, I have learned multiple things in English 1020. Not only have I learned new writing techniques and how to find and use credible sources, but I have also improved my writing skills. Throughout this semester, I focused on the topic of abortion, which, not surprisingly, I regretted soon after completing my annotated bibliography. However, by choosing this very biased topic I was able to give myself an academic challenge. I was challenged greatly when it came to forming and writing my own ethical opinion, as well as finding unbiased sources to help guide my research. Looking back at this semester I was faced with many bumps in the road, but now reading through the many revisions I put myself through, I have noticed the huge improvement I was able to make through this single English course.

While I've not be an academic tutor at SU, I was formerly an editor of the Austin-based music journal ATX On Record (now VinylList). As an editor, my duties included proofreading and editing article submissions, advising writers on how to strengthen their articles, and teaching them how to master the SEO.

Along with disadvantages of my writing also come the advantages which make me a half way decent writer in my perspective. In writing papers I include many interesting facts about the topic that I am writing on. This skill of being able to research topics good is something that I think is one of my major strengths because of the ability to take the time and patience to weed through tons of material. I am able to take this research that I find and incorporate it into my papers in a fair enough manner that makes my papers have way decent. Another strength that I posses is my

In this semester my achievement of improving my writing skills has increased significantly. My sentence lengths vary in a positive manner along with my word choice improving, becoming more complex and of writing expectation. My main struggle this semester would be the peer editing. Although I have improved significantly I still find it difficult to edit others papers. Further more than the common spelling and grammatical errors. I believe my essays have improved drastically from the beginning of the semester towards the end.

Writing is a skill that takes time to develop. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is very important. Being aware of your strengths can help you stand out, and your weaknesses show you areas where improvement is needed. Like everybody I have weaknesses as well as strengths, and being conscious of them helped me improve my writing skills.

Writing is not just as simple as putting words down on a document or a piece of paper, it is a process. Within this intricate process are steps that involve more than just writing, such as critical thinking, planning, and editing. Using these steps has not only helped me when planning an essay but also when composing one. Throughout this course, I have managed to improve many skills and gain a lot of strengths, but I still possess some weaknesses. Overall, I believe my strengths have definitely outgrown these weaknesses and have led to a better, more high-quality writing process which leads to improved essays.