Personal Narrative: Myself As A Writer

I don’t really like writing because whenever my teacher tells me to write about something I start to get confused on what to say then I start to get mad at myself and start to cry.The best thing I have ever written is when I had to wrote about legos, it was a nine pages and alot idioms and more.

Distant, cold, and non-existent describes my relationship with writing. My relationship with writing has never been a close relationship. Writing has always been difficult for me. I have never hated writing, but it has been a constant challenge for me. I will be discussing my fears of writing, the value of being able to express your ideas through writing, and what excites me about writing more and more.

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.

Many people enjoy and have fun writing, but then again, many people dislike having to write, including me. Writing has always been something I was never really interested on for many reasons.

When I first started English 101, I saw myself as having a few good strengths and a lot of weaknesses as a writer. Some of my strengths included being able to write a good introduction minus the thesis part. I also saw myself as knowing how to write a good conclusion that summarized what I talked about in my essay and being able to understand a article or essay by knowing what the author was talking about. Some of the improvements I saw in my writing thorough out the semester is learning how to write an essay where I can communicate with the audience with my own personal voice. I also feel I improved on knowing how to properly include quotes and how to find good creditable sources to include in my essay and on how to include both sides of a argument in my paper. Another improvement I found in my papers is learning how to revise them and approach each essay. However, there are some items of writing that I believe I improved on but still needs some work. For example, even though I have learned all about the rhetorical appeals and how to determine them in a essay, I still feel as if I do not know how to properly included them in my essay. I also see myself as improving on knowing how to write a thesis but still need work on

In my first “Who I am as a Writer” paper I stated how one of the areas that I needed to improve was writing. I went into more depth talking about how my writing is not descriptive enough and how I cannot grab the reader's attention. Even though I still need to continue making improvements, I have gotten better in both of these aspects. Compared to my papers in high school my introduction paragraphs have improved.

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.

This semester of writing has been truly interesting for me. Being able to write within a topic that interests me has made the process more exciting and engaging. I can see this growth in my papers this semester, but I feel that other, perhaps, cannot. It is true that the mechanics of my writing have improved and I am more able to articulate my thoughts and position. However, the real improvement, that other may not see, has been in my self-esteem and confidence in my own writing skills. I chose my sixth writing assignment as my example of progress for a variety of reasons. The two most prominent reasons are that it is one of my later assignments, and, therefore, will represent the most recent evidence of my progress and that it received my highest grade of all of my assignments.

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.

Al, Alde, de, shon, deshon, and Al’Deshon my name takes on many forms. Kind of like my writing in a sense. I have never been a strong writing also being the reason, I took this class first semester I think. If I get it out of the way maybe I’ll have an easier chance of reaching the finish line happening to be graduation.

This semester involved many writings that challenged my process in ways big and small. The variety of prompts each had their own details that required me to change perspectives as well as research topics to test my abilities as a writer. The topic that I felt helped me grow as a writer the most was the Personal Narrative. This essays caused me to think in its own way and only after completion was I able to effectively use the methods it taught me in my other assignments.

My writing journey has been pretty remarkable over the years. A lot of trial and error was utilized in discovering the writing style and techniques that would give me the most sense of accomplishment. I’ve been learning through the unit learning activities so far as College Composition II will be a bit more challenging due to the expectation of being able to write an effective academic piece from a formal perspective. There is always room for improvement which is why this semester I want to work on three aspects of my writing: sentence structure, grammar, and learning how to effectively grab my audience’s attention. Sentence structure and grammar have been difficult aspects for me to grasp in my writing due to the lack of frequency in writing academic papers.

Thinking about our first writing assignment, one of the suggestions focuses on the comparison of writing to running, it became apparent to me that this is something I would enjoy writing about. I am a long time running advocate, competing in marathons, and a neophyte writing student, and I find many similarities in both endeavors.

My identity as a writer comes from how I view a piece of writing. I view it as art. To create something that intrigues someone, that makes them angry, sad, or confused is my goal when I write. I want the audience to feel something. It just so happens that for most people, writing with the strategy of pathos in mind is always extremely effective. My environment growing up was that of complete creative freedom and I had the privilege to be able to explore my interests at such a young age. My experience with growing my skills as a writer I think started with my love for creating artsy things if you will, but after many years of being stuck as a novice, I developed exponentially during my high school years. I came into my own as a student and learned how to let my longing to stay creative creep into every project I could get my hands on. But I struggled where I perceived creativity wasn't needed i.e. math and history. I became uninterested and skated by in that aspect. Why would I put so much of my time into something that so strongly opposed who I am as a person?