My Struggle for a Thousand Words
I have led a pretty simple life without much writing attached to it. I finished my high school experience by receiving my GED and soon after was fortunate enough to land a good blue collar job, working for Bell South, never being required to write a stitch. A couple of years ago I was laid off after the company sold to AT&T. I had to move back home with my parents. Regretting not going to college when I was young, I decided to enroll. So the writing experience that I will discuss in my paper will be this one told in the present. Let me tell you, it has been a negative one.
With job opportunities being slim, without a college education, I wound up taking a job as a delivery driver. When I tell my friend and coworker, Robert, that I cannot get drunk and play video games like we do every Thursday night, he decides to help me with this essay. So we brainstorm some ideas for a couple of hours. He comes up with a story from his experience in high school, which was tempting to use, but I ultimately decide that I need to do this myself. So we scrapped it and started over. After about another hour or so with nothing coming to mind, he sarcastically says to me “Glenn, you’re in over your head, you are too old, what a waste of time this has been.” I tell him “If you’re going to complain all night, you can just leave so I can get this done.” Robert claims to be a casualty of this essay, for instead of playing Playstation as we usually do in an alcohol induced coma, we’re sitting in front of the computer sighing in tandem. We get absolutely nothing done and find ourselves watching the History Channel all night.
The next day I am sitting at the dining room table tryin...
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... in bed and my parents are asleep. I pour three fingers of whiskey and try the Hemingway approach, minus the shotgun blast to the head. I start to write about some fictitious note I wrote to a high school girlfriend when I think to myself, I might have to read this out loud . Having to recite some love letter might be a little embarrassing. Well the alcohol only distracted me from doing my work. I won’t be doing that again.
I finally came to the conclusion that this is the only writing assignment that has influenced my attitude toward writing, being that I never finished school and failed most of my English classes. So I decided to write about this experience. It has made me realize that I hate writing but understand the importance of it. Hopefully as I develop my skills, I will come to enjoy it. But for now, I hope this is close to a thousand words.
"Ms. McMulkin, this is Alex. That essay--- how long can it be?" "Why, uh, not less than 600 words." He sounded a little surprised. I'd forgotten it was late at night. "Can it be longer?" "Certainly, Alex, as long as you want it." "Thanks," I said and hung up. I sat down and picked up my pen and thought for a minute. Remembering. Remembering a handsome, dark boy with a reckless grin and a hot temper. A tough, towheaded boy with a cigarette in his mouth and a bitter grin on his hard face. Remembering- -- and this time it didn't hurt--- a quiet, defeated-looking sixteen-year-old whose hair needed cutting badly and who had black eyes with a frightened expression to them. One week had taken all three of them. And I decided I could tell people, beginning with my English teacher. I wondered for a long time how to start that theme, how to start writing about something that was important to me. And I finally began like this: When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride
This assignment is a testament of growth and contributed to my outlook on strategies towards improving my writing through the importance of understanding how crucial, each component of the writing process is and how in depth you should take each process. Lastly, this reflection advocated how editing is the principal task of every good writer. “To write is human, to edit is divine,” Stephen
My analysis over the development of my writing throughout this semester. I will assess many aspects of my experiences with English 1301 up to this point in the semester. I will explain the ways by which I have blossomed as a writer during this time. I will provide brief examples of my work to show what I am basing the evaluation of my writing on. What my conceptions of writing were, at the start of, the semester and compare it to what they are now. I will clarify how my work this semester reflects the concepts of writing and reading we have been working on and studying in class. I will tell about what and how particular reading assignments have been influential in my growth of creative ideas. Lastly, my interpretation of what it means to be a writer, and how my experiences this semester has influenced my opinion on writing.
In this semester, I had to take the English 1301 course. However, I did not see myself liking this course and did not have the best attitude towards it. This course changed my overall experience with writing. In the course I gained so much knowledge that I did not see myself learning. This essay will help analyze my experience throughout the entire journey. It will help understand how I became the writer I am today. Over the last several weeks, I have grown into a great writer that I did not see myself as.
The story of my history as a writer is a very long one. My writing has come full circle. I have changed very much throughout the years, both as I grew older and as I discovered more aspects of my own personality. The growth that I see when I look back is incredible, and it all seems to revolve around my emotions. I have always been a very emotional girl who feels things keenly. All of my truly memorable writing, looking back, has come from experiences that struck a chord with my developing self. This assignment has opened my eyes, despite my initial difficulty in writing it. When I was asked to write down my earliest memory of writing, at first I drew a blank. All of a sudden, it became very clear to me, probably because it had some childhood trauma associated with it.
When trying to think of a positive writing experience I have had in my lifetime, particularly as a small child, I could not think of any. So I began to ask myself why is it that I do not like writing, what happened in my life for me to have such animosity towards the act. I was finally able to think of an event and realized that it had all begun in the 3rd grade. One day, as a punishment for talking during class, I was kept inside during recess and was forced to write Wise Old Owls until my hands began to cramp. For 45 minutes, I was only allowed to write the same old phrase over and over again; “The wise old owl sat on an oak, the more he heard, the less he spoke, the less he spoke the more he heard, why can’t I be like that wise old bird”. To this day I can still remember that little rhyme and to this day I can remember that same feeling I felt as a elementary school student. From that point on I have always had an aversion for writing, it always seemed like a punishment. I still do not understand how people can journal. I don’t see how someone can sit down and write an entry or a novel just for the hell of it. It seems unnatural to me, but I guess that all of these feelings are just because I see writing as a punishment, an
‘I am going to fail’ was the very first thought that crept into my mind on that very first day of class. Before I stepped into the classroom on the first day, I felt pretty good about my writing. I had done previously well in English, and didn’t think this class would be much of a challenge. This all changed on the first day of school, when my professor talked about the level of reading and writing expected for this class. I remember thinking ‘I don’t read, why couldn’t I have been born someone who likes to read?!’ Since this moment on the very first day of class, I have grown immensely through hard work. In this essay, I will explain what I have learned over the course of this class about myself, and about writing.
Writing doesn’t come easily to me, which must make me a glutton for punishment. It has taken me years of training, learning to structure an essay and unlearning to begin again. Only since attending HSU am I realizing how exceptional my writing has become. Over the course of two semesters, I have seen my writing expand and grow. While I still adhere to the training I received in high school, I am excited to now take these tools and develop my own unique style in the years to come.
As I shoved my notebook into my backpack, I heard my writing fellow murmur something about an essay. I wasn’t worried. After taking every Advanced Placement English class my high school offered, I felt equipped to handle a simple essay until received Dr. Carver’s email with the prompt and instructions. I blinked at the screen and rubbed my eyes; thinking I had misread the message, I read it again. I was supposed to have the essay finished in approximately 42 hours, but I had never written a decent essay in less than four days. I was in a state of panic; all of my ideas had evacuated my imagination leaving me with a painful case of writer’s block. To me, most of good writing is good editing and proper editing requires having a window to forget your writing before returning to it: a window that 42 hours just couldn’t provide.
3:30 A.M. finds me in front of a glowing computer screen yet again. I’m waiting for inspiration. My friends, kind enough to let me use their dorm room and their Macintosh, are asleep in their beds just feet away in the half-darkness, reaping the rewards of their wisdom: they haven’t waited until the night before like I have. I take swigs of Mountain Dew from a plastic mug; it’s the sweet nectar of the Gods of Last-Minute Paper Writing. No, make that bittersweet nectar -- the taste of sugary green goodness reminds me, with every swallow, that I’ve sentenced myself to another unnecessary all-nighter. I have few ideas and even less time…
As my English 101 class comes to an end, I have realized how much I have transformed as a writer. In this essay, I am going to explain what I realized my strengths and weaknesses are as a writer and how they have manifested themselves throughout the quarter. I was skeptical at first coming into this class knowing that English takes formidable work and dedication, but I am very proud of the progress I have made. We completed a great deal of work throughout the quarter; from grammar exercises, summary reviews, and two challenging essays. Throughout the quarter I found myself improving in each category. As a writer, my skills and confidence have developed into more clarity and thought, something I have always wanted to be, as a result of a well constructed class that led to a superb educational experience.
Writing has been my most challenging requirement through school. I am not a very experienced writer. I was not required to write much in high school until my last semester. My last semester in high school, about a year and half ago, I took GENR-091 which is the last time I have written a paper longer than one page. That was my most recent writing class; I am rusty to say the least.
During this period my writing seemed to have experienced maturation. I have added transitions, semicolons, sentence variations and even learned a variety of other ways to write. One of the best ways I have learned to write was through “The Vanishing Stories” my literacy essay. Although it was not very far in the semester, I applied everything I knew, new and old, to that essay as to prove what effect writing my first horror story had on me. This essay also manages to clarify the start of my minor writing activities. On the other hand, the essay that reflects me best is “More Than a Parade,” my profile essay; this is because it took on a personal aspect due to its relation to my heritage. All of the descriptions within the essay were from many years of experience to reflect both the enjoyable and significant parts of the festivities. Aside from the opportunity to flourish as a writer, this class also provided me with a chance to understand writing on another
Over the course of the semester, I feel that I have grown as a writer in many ways. When I came into the class, there were skills I had that I already excelled at. During my time in class, I have come to improve on those skills even more. Before I took this class, I didn’t even realise what I was good at. This is the first class where I felt I received feedback on my writing that helped me to actually review my work to see what areas I lacked in and where I succeeded.
As I look back on my schooling I can’t believe how many papers I’ve written throughout my life. Naturally as I’ve grown up, my writing has developed from learning how to write sentences all the way up to the pages of essays that consist of deeper criteria. I know for a fact that I’m a better writer now than I was before. College writing is more challenging and I’ve had to learn how to adjust to it.