Why I Am A Writer

Over this quarter of English, I have learned many things out of the three to four essays that we have written. I have learned how to write college papers in the appropriate page requirements. Our teacher noticed after the first two essays we wrote that we suffered from sentence fragments, sentence run ons, and comma splices. I have learned how to fix those errors in my papers that I write. A thing I have learned about myself as a writer is that I write very well when a paper is about my personal life because it is easier to write about yourself than about a topic that you are just researching for the first time. If the paper is about my life experiences, I would get a good grade on it.

When students complete a first draft, they consider the job of writing done – and their teachers too often agree. When professional writers complete a first draft, they usually feel that they are at the start of the writing process. When a draft is completed, the job of writing can begin. That difference in attitude is the difference between amateur and professional, inexperience and experience, journeyman and craftsman. Peter F. Drucker, the prolific business writer, calls his first draft “the zero draft”–after that he can start counting. Most writers share the feeling that the first draft, and all of those which follow, are opportunities to discover what they have to say and how best they can say it. To produce a progression of drafts, each of which says more and says it more clearly, the writer has to develop a special kind of reading skill. In school we are taught to decode what appears on the page as finished writing. Writers, however, face a different

Everyone on the planet has a goal set in life, but only a handful attempt to improve to obtain their goal by studying the subject their goal is in. In my English class, English 101 this quarter I was astonished by how much I had progressed as a writer sharpening my writing skills and also learned a lot about writing that I hadn’t learned before. In my writing portfolio for this quarter I had to write an autobiography essay, a research essay, and this reflection essay to develop my writing skills better. The writing assignments were fun to do because it challenged me to work on essays of different styles that were new to me. The essay assignments helped me grow as a better writer that gave me the self-confidence and skills to take on the world on my own.

Within the past eight weeks, I have realized my strengths and weaknesses within the writing process. I have realized that I do not utilize the first step within the writing process of prewriting. However, for the drafting, revising, and polishing steps of the writing process, I am very familiar and use additional resources to strengthen the writing assignment. I create multiple drafts, which includes revising and polishing in each step. Therefore, I use all three of these steps in multiple drafts as I reach the final product for

“I am not by any means a competent writer.” This was the first sentence in my introduction for my first journal assignment. However, over the last eight weeks in this course, I have proven this statement false. I now realize, that I have always been a competent writer, but I was not a confident one. Therein was the problem, my confidence level. This issue caused me to struggle and question everything in the writing process, from grammar to thesis statements. The mere idea of writing an essay sent my heart racing. But it was either write the essays or fail the course and failing simply was not an option. So, how has my writing process changed over the last eight weeks? In large part it hasn’t, my writing process has remained the same, but as

Growing up, reading and writing were always a pleasurable experience for me. As a little girl, my mother and grandmother would both tell me stories that they had once been told when they were children in their native country of Cuba. Although the stories they told me weren’t being narrated directly from a book, they motivated me to read some stories on my own. So I began requesting books and taking trips to the library. Those stories inspired me to begin writing and so by the age of 8, I picked up a pencil and embarked on my composing journey. I had countless journals throughout the years and even began writing short stories and poems. My father was the one that encouraged me most when it came to my writing as he genuinely believed I was talented.

Another obstacle is that I will have to get my name out in the writing business.

After I graduated from college three years ago, I wanted to quickly break into the writing world. I knew I had a writer 's mind and a writer 's blood, yet I didn 't acknowledge the true commitment it took to become a good writer.

I am an avid reader and writer of fiction and poetry and have recently quit my management career to focus on my dream of writing. I am currently offering my talents to various companies seeking writers to assist in their business, and would love to add more to my resume. I love learning new things and enjoy writing more than any other profession I have previously held. I am looking forward to finally living my dream of writing and hope to make a successful career from it.

I would love to be a creative writer at Barbara Ingram School for the Arts. I enjoy writing very much, so when I heard about the creative writing program, I was beyond excited and wanted to learn more about it. I later attended the session night and walked out of it knowing I had to attend Barbara Ingram. I want to be a creative writer at BISFA so I can become a better writer. Attending BISFA is a great opportunity for me to focus and greatly improve on my writing. I'll be able learn different styles and techniques of writing in a depth I wouldn't get at any other high school. Teachers at BISFA will help me recognize my weaknesses and teach me how to improve them. Attending this school is also a great opportunity for me to meet to like-minded

About halfway through my creative writing degree, I had an existential crisis. Ever since I read Letters to a Young Contrarian at the age of thirteen – ignore that I only understood about twenty percent of it at the time – I knew I wanted to be a writer. Christopher Hitchens’ words inspired me and sparked a love of literature and intellectual honesty that persists to this day. However, as weeks turned into months in class, I kept thinking, do I even want to be a writer, and if so, what stories do I want to tell? These thoughts remained and grew louder, creating a mental block that impacted my creativity and thus made the plethora of writing assignments I was given more unbearable. It was a vicious cycle that led me down a path of self-reflection

Change can happen in an instant or overtime. Writing to the best of my potential won’t happen overnight, and it certainly hasn’t stopped improving itself. When a writing assignment is thrown in front of me, I turn to the people and events in my life that make me for who I am. Many individuals and things are encompassed in my life. Every topic I write about comes from the heart in one way or another. Everything affects me, and everything around me plays a role. It’s important to me to be able to recognize those who have contributed to molding me into who I am today: from my boyfriend telling me he has cancer to expressing gratitude.

I used some practices of good writers to improve my writing, such as revising the first draft, trying to write regularly, and break big jobs into small chunks. Moreover, I read daily, try to have a large vocabulary, choose and use several different strategies, focus on purpose, audience, use rules flexibly, and finish a draft before editing text.

Over the course of this year, have changed as a writer and thinker, but I still have goals to set and things to improve upon. As a writer, I started out thinking high of myself, sometimes writing in a style that made myself sound like I was trying too hard, or using advanced styles and vocabulary that I really didn’t know well enough to use them correctly. As the year continued, I realized that it was more important to write correctly and know what you are doing, than using things that sound fancy. In addition, I learned how to make my writing sound better, so I was able to utilize that in my writing correctly. I have also improved upon getting my ideas onto paper in a timely manner, but I still have trouble with it. I am beginning

I have never really liked to read and write. At a very young age, I learned that writing and reading homework was the one that I most hated doing. I didn’t learn how to read and write until I entered elementary school. I remember that my mom would put my brother and I to do our writing homework and she would tell me to do my letters smaller and she would tell my brother to write bigger. She would really struggle with both of us when it came to doing our homework because she would tell me something and my brother would do it and vice versa. I don’t really know how she managed to help us with our homework when she didn’t even know how to actually speak or write English.