Personal Narrative: What Defines A Successful Writer

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.

My writing experiences have been minimal. So far I have only learned the basics of writing, like forming sentences and forming sentences to put into paragraphs. I can tell that my writing has improved throughout the years. I hope to improve in writing essays, paragraphs, stories, and speeches so that I have no errors with editing and creating the final product. I predict that I will be a well rounded writer when I graduate from Newman University.

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.

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.

During this semester in English 107, I have progressed more as a writer. Before I went to University of Arizona, my writing was rigid. I wrote five-paragraph TOEFL style essay all the time in my high school life. After I attended in English 107, I was not confident about my writing skill. Throughout these three projects we have done, I become more and more confident about my writing skill than before. The Student Learning Outcomes also helped me to grow as a writer a lot. In these goals, I did well on several of them, but I still need to work on the other goals.

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?

As an incoming freshmen my strengths as a writer are a wide vocabulary , word usage, and writing argumentative essays. I feel with having strength in those areas allows me to be a successful write, with success comes some weakness. My weaknesses are grammar, punctuation, spelling ,and thesis statements. I have a hard time trying to depict what is the best punctuation when writing. All throughout grade school and high school I've always been an underachiever in spelling. English and writing are my least strongest subjects. I floundered in high school with these subjects. In my personal opinion I don't think my high school prepared us well enough for writing on the college level.  I think that the areas that I struggle are very basic levels of

One of my strengths as a writer is when I start to write I get into a writing flow, it is when someone's thoughts and writing feel like they are completely in sync as they write, and I am sure that almost everyone gets into a flow when they get focused enough. The problem for me is getting into that writing flow in the first place. I am talking about the common writer's block; also, another weakness that I found when I was in English N50 is that I have a particularly hard time writing about myself. I did improve over the course, but I still struggle. The last skill that I exceeded in my last English class is proofreading other classmates work, and that was either because I truly am good at proofreading, or it was because there was a lot of

When it comes to writing I have a mental breakdown, I get nervous, overthink, and emotionally stressed. These three words describe me as a writer. In high school I would have a difficult time starting papers, often times my weaknesses was grammar and sentences fragments. How I feel about writing is how I feel when a love one dies. It's like as if I'm at a funeral and my paper is the one being funeralized. I think the reason why I am how I am about writing is because my college English teacher in high school was so harsh on my papers, and ever since then I've been traumatize to write papers.

When people think of writer’s block they assume that it’s because they are unable to think of what to write about. Well, that isn’t always the case, in my case, it’s because I have writers block due to the face that I am unable to translate what thoughts are in my mind on to a certain format. Of course I am aware of the tradition MLA formats as well as the APA, but unless it’s a research paper, a strictly scientific- biology related paper, I am at complete loss.

Throughout my high school career, I have been exposed to many different elements of writing and, although some teachers have emphasized certain areas more than others, I feel I have come a long way as a writer. Despite this I also know I have much further to go. This fact became very clear to me as I was taking my previous course of English, Accelerated English Three. Within this course I was introduced to the MLA method of citation, I experienced disappointment due to receiving a lower grade than I had desired, and I discovered difficulties such as my impatient tendencies to look over errors and mistakes during the editing processes.

My experience with writing has been very up and down because I have a hard time focusing on the topic. I would say that’s something I need to honestly work on because my attitude is if I'm not into it then I'm not doing it simple. Some of my past teachers in high school said that I could write but I honestly don’t know about now. I'll admit that I've gotten lazy in the sense that if I'm not into the work then I'll just pass it with a D or just retake it. I need to get out of that and just suck it up and get it over and done with.

I started to write when I was 10 years old. It was under the recommendation of my therapist who believed that it would help me release negative emotions, and it did. Since then I have loved to write stories, journals, poems, anything that could set my imagination free. However as a writer I’ve always felt unsuccessful I have always felt that the pieces I write are never completed. Even more that as a writer I was not good enough and I shouldn’t show my writings to anyone that I shouldn't even bother to continue as a writer. These reason both motivate me and make me not want to continue but I choose to let it motivate me because I

I believe that everyone should chase their dreams and never give up no matter how hard it gets. Two years ago during my sophomore year my friend, Janet, introduced me to a writing app called Wattpad. I fell in love with the app and my friend had written a story on their as well she encouraged me to publish a story I had been writing on Wattpad too. After some debate I decided take her advice and publish the story other people I knew ended up reading the book and told me to keep writing. So I continued to write throughout my sophomore year it was fun and easy at first until I ran into writers block and the story grinded to a halt.

As a writer, I have improved tremendously. Over the course of the 2015 fall semester, English 015 has helped me grow as a writer in all ways possible. From hearing Dr. Duffy’s wise words regarding writing throughout class, to participating in peer review sessions, writing has become a skill that I have flourished in. As a child, I would constantly write stories and poems to express my feelings and emotions. Sadly enough, I can admit that as a lonely child, writing was my only companion and confidant. As an eight year old child, I found myself writing stories about the individuals in or around my life. After creating a satire about my mother’s workplace and the employee’s who worked there, I knew I had a gift regarding writing. I watched my