Writer's Profile

        This class has been my journey from a robot who writes papers to a human being that produces works of writing that are personal and sincere, while still satisfying their purposes. You told us at the beginning of the semester that one of your goals was to help us individualize ourselves and find our unique styles as writers, and I feel as though the class has been successful in doing that. The articles we read help a lot, because they offered many different views on how writing should be carried out. You didn’t simply hammer an ideology into our minds; you let us read the articles and decide for ourselves, which I consider to be very important in my growth as a writer. Anne Lammot’s “Shitty First Drafts” was the most influential article, in my experience. Utilizing her strategies has made writing easier and more enjoyable. The “This I Believe” assignment was the most helpful assignment in developing a personal style. In that essay, I was able to bleed out completely onto the screen, and it was one of the best feelings I’ve ever had while writing. The only thing that hindered my journey was the research project at the end. Even though it couldn’t be as personal, it was a good exercise of trying to add uniqueness to something as dull-sounding as a research project. My writing process has changed dramatically over time. Coming out of high school, my goal was to create the longest essay with the longest words and the most rigid structure. Now, my goal is to create writing that is my own but still serves its purpose and is appropriate for the target audience. I follow Anne Lammot’s philosophy that banging out a subpar first draft in haste is the best way to get a work done. Before, I would spend minutes on each sentence, trying to find better words and analyzing syntax and diction. Now, I write the first draft quickly and improve the writing until I am confident enough to call it a work of writing. At the beginning of the semester, my goals were to become a more personal writing and to be more creative in my writing. To achieve these goals, I tried to write papers without the use of a thesaurus, and I strived to add figurative language to my writing. I feel as though I have made large steps in becoming a personal and creative writer, although I do not believe my journey is over. In the future, I would honestly like to become a master of figurative language, because the use of metaphors has always intrigued me. Becoming talented with metaphors would help me in prose writing and in lyricism, which is a major outlet of mine. The only major challenge I had during the course was to break away from the bondage that was secondary education. I had been taught the same way of writing for many years, and I had written countless essays. I finally had a firm grasp on writing in high school, and I was able to make A’s on essays easily. It was stressful to be told that rigid structure and impersonal writing was not the way. You told us to make the writing our own, and I was scared. My strategy for overcoming this challenge was to try and write as if I was having a conversation. This seemed to work, as I do not remember getting reprimanded for my writing. The class has made me look a writing from a whole new perspective.  You taught us that writing can be much more beautiful than a five paragraph essay. Because my definition of “good writing” has changed from good structure and vocabulary to sincerity and purpose, I have been able to find beauty in almost any piece of writing. The peer reviews seemed to help me the most in my writing process, because they gave me a sense of what my writing was accomplishing. My peers were able to tell me if they were impacted by my writing or not, and that helped my process along quite a lot. At the beginning of the semester, the only thing I expected from the class was to come out a better writer. I didn’t know what a “better writer” meant at the time, but I hoped that I would improve as a result of the class. In my introductory reflective essay, I wrote that I wanted to become able to write fluidly, so that I could get through timed writing and long papers. I feel like my fluidity has increased significantly, because now I have a problem stopping when I’m writing when before I had trouble getting the first sentence out. The assignments the contributed the most to my writing style were the personal credo and the “This I Believe” essay. Like I said, I was able to put all of my thoughts and emotions onto the screen, and that helped me discover a lot of things about myself as a writer and as a person. I’ve always felt that my stories could have positive impact, and these to assignment showed me that I could actually make a difference with my writing. This realization gave me a new found confidence in my abilities to write. In all, I do not think I have turned a new leaf in writing, because I still try too hard on assignments due to self-consciousness, but I do feel as though I have made significant progress in my journey as a writer.