Reflection Of Writing : The Influence Of Reading, And Writing

Well, my first semester in college is coming to an end and I have learned many things about myself, my learning and most specifically my writing. My writing 101 class was a bit of a culture shock for me. I was surprised by the amount of freedom we had in that class and how much I didn’t actually know about writing. Our class’s instructions were to keep a blog of what we were feeling or thinking while writing each essay over the course of the semester. With each essay and blog post, I learned more and more about my writing style and what I liked to write about.

For my first semester on an actual college campus as a sixteen year old high school student, I embarked upon many new things. Making my own schedule, having more accountability for my grades and simply taking the first few steps into adulthood. As I spend more time on campus everything that seems hard and confusing will only become more adaptable with time. Everything gets better with time. I know this because throughout my experience in English Composition 1101 I have seen a proliferation in my writing process and skills.

Voice in writing is a tricky thing. All of my public education has taught me that to write with any hint of informality is a cardinal sin. Essays are respectable, formal. Kindly leave all that artistic rubbish to the novelists. This is not how I write. I have learned how to insert my unique perspective into my work and voice is a big part of that. My voice is what makes my writing my writing. While I was quite good at analyzing works coming into this class, when it comes to writing for an audience I really did come into my own during the semester. I also learned how to ask better questions and think critically on how I went about writing. Now, with a semester under my belt, I can confidently mesh different sources into my paper, write to an audience rather than at an audience, question my reality, and cultivate a writing process to bring it all together.

The class discussions surrounding the writing process and your feedback concerning adding personality to my writing will be the subject of this week's entry. First, I'd like to address the feedback concerning the personality (or lack thereof) that you've experienced in the writings I have submit thus far. Throughout my academic career, including my experiences in the “ENG 111” course the emphasis as to what constituted excellent writing has always been placed on syntactics, correct adherence to conventions of American English grammar, and putting forth great effort to elevate diction throughout the writing process (even if such diction might detract from the overall voice or tone of the final product). These precepts of writing being ingrained

In the third grade I was one of the few kids who still wasn’t able to read. I remember very clearly being embarrassed whenever my teacher told us to go read when we were done with our work because all I could do was look at the pictures. Somehow, despite being a late bloomer, I developed a love for reading. That love quickly turned into a love of the english language as a whole, and gave me the intense desire to write. Since I can remember I’ve always loved writing, no matter what type it was. Academic, creative, fictitious or non fiction, I’ve always loved it. Though I still do spend a lot of my time procrastinating at the start of an essay, I’ve always been able to manage to get something out that I’ve felt at least mostly proud of.

“I either go to television or turn on the radio in my car” (Whitefield 2011). Before I started this class, that is what I thought about when someone asked me “Do you keep up with the news?”. Most people do not get the opportunity to learn about what is going on around the world in their everyday lives and how they can help out. I feel that being in this class I got the chance to learn more about life and what is happening everywhere, not just insignificant matters such as who Kim Kardashian is now dating or why Kylie Jenner got more lip injections, I am learning about the important things. I am getting the chance to learn about how I can participate in the world to make big changes because of reading The New York Times, “Why Local Newspapers,” and “Freedom is Intended as a Challenge.”

Throughout my childhood, I endlessly battled with reading and writing. I was exceptionally inadequate at learning grammar and memorizing vocabulary words. Not to mention my hardships with generating well structured and eloquent essays. However, I possessed a passionate love of reading and writing. It was not until the following of my Freshman year in high school, that I truly began to flourish when it came to writing essays and reading complex novels.

Before this course started I didn’t believe I would become a better writer, but to a certain degree, I have. Since taking this course I have been able to grow and learn as a writer, editor, and creative. I have tried to improve particular aspects of my writing such as paying closer attention to my audience. I have learned writing skills and techniques from The Art of Rhetoric which I applied to my writings. In addition, an important and useful skill that I learned from this class was to start writing early. The next assignment was a working draft; it helped me write down all my thoughts and sources I had found and also determine if my focus was valid and in the right direction. After, having the working draft reviewed, the next drafts were

Mrs. Brown, my freshman English teacher, sparked my interest in writing as a form of creative expression, rather than the mindless exercise previous teachers had taught me. Instead of encouraging her students to write alongside formal guidelines, Mrs. Brown initially allowed each student to demonstrate their writing abilities through a classic narrative. Her reasoning: narratives allow her to know her students writing style, their strengths, and their weaknesses. It was this unrestricting and optimistic attitude of Mrs. Brown’s which compelled me to express myself clearly in my writing and disregard any inclination of forming an essay which catered to a specific rubric.

My head is pounding and my eyes are burning while I try writing for this weeks discussion. The more I read about the process of creative writing the more confused I get. Will I ever understand how to apply what I read correctly? This week I tired to learn about using specific details, cutting wordy clauses, and varying sentence structure.

Over the course of this year I have had the opportunity to use all of the writing techniques that we have learned in class this year during my assignments. But when going back through and reflecting on my works I have had many different chances to incorporate them in but had missed my opportunity. During the beginning of the year I worked as quickly as I could to finish assignments and was barely able to turn them in on time. This was a huge problem for me because I was not able to fully understand every writing strategy and when and where to use them. However as the year progressed I was able to budget more time for completing my homework so I could incorporate these new strategies that we learned during class into my assignments. Over the course of this reflection I will talk about certain assignments that I could have improved with different techniques and then show how I did.

Throughout this course, writing 101, I have learned how to improve my writing in many aspects. This course has taught me the correct ways to write a college essay and has helped me get out of old habits that I got away with in high school. When I first found out that we were required to take a writing class I was nervous because I am not the bets writer. For the class, we were required to write down a list of goals that we would work towards through the class to help improve in writing. For me there was a lot I could have worked on so I made sure I wrote out goals that I would stick to in order to get a good foundation in writing at the college level. My main outcomes for this course where that I needed to do my essays at least a week

Writing is way that we can express ourselves, it is a way to interface ideas and thoughts and to prove a point. Throughout my writing experience or process I have struggled with writing especially using details or really expressing myself my work. In this course Facts & Fiction: Portraits in World Art I expect to gain more knowledge on how to write a perfect essay, story, letter, and assignment. I expect to learn new genres and rhetorical situations. I also think my writing will improve academically and I will develop my skills in writing. Also taking my writing to a different point of view, level, and writing something different rather than the usual. I look forward to getting feedback from my peers and learning their thoughts on my writing and how they can help me improve.

Writing has always been something I dread. It’s weird because I love talking and telling stories, but the moment I have to write it all down on paper, I become frantic. It’s almost as if a horse race just begun in my mind, with hundreds of horses, or words, running through my mind, unable to place them in chronological order. Because I struggle to form satisfying sentence structure, it takes me hours, sometimes even days, to write one paper. It’s not that I think I’m a “bad writer,” I just get discouraged easily. Needless to say, I don’t think highly of my writing skills. When I was little I loved to both read and write. I read just about any book I could get my hands on, and my journal was my go to for my daily adventures. Although it’s

It is my belief that through this class and the tools provided, that my growth as a writer has grown through leaps and bounds I would never have assumed possible. It is not so much the skill I refer to, although I would think skill has gone up in some levels as well, but more so the appreciation for the craft of writing itself. Intially, at the start of this class my sole goal was to further my understanding and appreciation of the writer's and books that I so love to read. Through further evaluation within the first week, a few other goals came to mind, of which were, making writing a habit, finishing what I start, stop second guess my writing skills and making effective use of detail and description. Through the use of the many articles, various reading materials, whether poems or short stories, and especially through the workshop, I feel I was able to really push myself to accomplishing these goals. I have thus far learned how important it is not to be skilled at writing per say, but to have the will to write, that poetry is as much about it's sound as it is about it's subject, just how important character development is, how the narration and point of view of a story is essential to the way the story is told, and just how much of a difference peer's critiques can make to your writing.