Personal Narrative: Improving My Writing

How can I become a better writer? Throughout my writing experiences, I have learned I have many weaknesses along with strengths. My experiences with writing has not always been the best, but over time, with lots of practice and instructions from my instructors, I can proudly say that I have gained a better understanding on the layout of essays and papers. As well as understanding how to write correctly my goal as a writer is to learn how to overcome my weaknesses and use my strengths to my highest ability. I have many strengths, weaknesses and goals that I plan to achieve and overcome in my college career.

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?

My writing has changed a lot throughout the year. Some of my first pieces included lots of redundancies, “th” words, and things that could be changed. In addition, the sentences were not as long as they could have been. These things were brought to my attention by reviewing my writing and using the writing goal sheet. Over the semester, I have learned these little mistakes separate lower level writing from higher level writing. Reviewing my old writing and writing instruction has recently been on my mind while I write essays. They help me to write to the best of my ability. The first sentence of my essay at the beginning of the year is, “I am thirteen years old and I am interested in building and designing things.” This sentence has redundancy

How long was I going to continue to ignore the fact that I desperately needed help with my writing? Reflecting back even in high school it seems I’ve always had the same problems when it came to my writing. Maybe it was the fact that I was too lazy to take the extra time out to write out a rough draft, unless of course it counted towards my grade, or maybe it was the fact that I never paid attention to my grammar because I was always rushing. Either way it goes once I got to college I realized I wasn’t going to be able to skate by with just putting my initial ideas on paper and turning them in, if I really wanted to get a good grade I would have to work for it.

This is the 25 minute writing challenge, where I’m not allowed to use the backspace button on my keyboard or edit what I’m typing. There are probably going to be many typos in this small paper, but that’s apart of the challenge as I can't edit anything. I honestly have no clue what to write about, but atleast I’m 3 minutes in right now.

My writing process starts when I am given an assignment. I’m not one to just write for fun, so this is usually the only way I can make myself write. Don’t let that fool you though, because once I start writing something and my ideas start flowing, it’s hard for me to stop. Personally, I love to be able to choose what I’m writing about. I don’t like getting assigned a topic, because that means everybody else has to write about the same topic and that ends up with everybody asking what I wrote in my paper and comparing it to theirs. I HATE when my writing gets compared to other peoples’, because we are all unique and different writers and we shouldn’t be so concerned about who stated certain facts better or got a higher grade.

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.

My earliest memories of reading was when my mom sent me to bible school and the teacher would read out a hand book

Throughout my writing process there are a various amount of steps I do to perfect it. Generally coming up with the idea is the most difficult part of any writing, even now, it is difficult to get started with the essay. Once I dive in though, it gets quite easier. Procrastination is a problem that i can not seem to shake. I will attempt to sit down, but as soon as the littlest thing pops up, I will usually be distracted and lose my train of thought. I attempt to run through the whole essay in my head before I start just to get a proper idea of how it will be structured.

My writing process in the past has never been concrete. It was even very rare that I had a process or even realized that I had a process going on. All I did was write without revision. For example, one time I had a research paper due the next day. I made the decision to take all of the examples I had, write it out, explain it, then give my take on the example, 30 minutes before it was due. Although it was littered with grammar mistakes, I got a passing grade. However, this anxious direction of writing held me back from creating great writing assignments and projects.Because I was being told constantly that I had "great ideas but terrible form" made writing extremely hard and close to depressing.

The first step of my writing process when I write a traditional essay consists of brainstorming. If a certain format is provided, I have to brainstorm the order of my key points. On the other hand, for some assignments I am given the specifics of what I need to talk about (like these Log Its) and even given subheadings which I must include to offer a professor better access and recognition of key parts. Once I begin to write, I never have in mind that what I write is a draft of any sort. Personally, I like to keep up with my grammar, spelling and punctuation as I go, so once I finish, the paper is pretty close to being finished with very few mistakes. Sometimes, I type a word that I doesn’t fit into the context but at that time, I have a couple of sentences in my had that I know will disappear if I don’t type them out, so I type (?) after the word to remember to find a synonym or change the word.

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.

Prior to entering class, I deemed myself a competent writer. However, I quickly discovered that my writing involved mediocre writing precepts. In contrast to the principles of scholarly discourse, my writing held the tenets of conversational writing and failed to meet academic standards. Furthermore, much of my poor writing was akin to a deep-rooted habit that I found humbling to admit and challenging to correct. Passive voice, unneeded words, long sentences, were a few of the obstacles that impeded my journey to effective writing. However, using peer reviews and an editing checklist I slowly began improving my skills as a competent writer. I also found that reading concerning writing provided supplementary methods to improve my skills as a scholarly writer. Implementing these innovative techniques, I slowly began to

My struggles began my first academic year in the fall of 2014. The course I enrolled in was a seminar course, that was led by an adjunct professor. Problems surfaced when the professor actions were less than professional on more than one occasion. On one event, she separated the immigrant/ minorities students from the rest of the class, to discuss our shortcoming as writers. We were informed that our poor writing was affecting us in class and in our practicum placement. The line of questioning and statements made by the professor was inappropriate as they concern our cultural background and our time in the country. Attempting to advocate for myself, the professor was notified that the issue had not been brought to my attention by my field instructor and my grade in the class did not reflect such statements.

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.