ENC 1101 spring essay 1 (final draft) PDF

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Writing how I want...

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Linares 1 Josue Linares Steve Ethridge ENC 1101 29 January, 2018 Writing How I Want: Sense the beginning of my educational journey writing has always been my worst topic, even my friends and I would consider my writing skills to be trash. Elementary school was a trip due to the fact that I failed first grade because of my reading skills and it also didn’t help that I was a quiet kid growing up. In school we were always taught to write in a formatted way, for some odd reason I couldn’t seem to make any of my lines flow well together which had always lead me to having low essay scores. This was consistent all threw my schooling until I went to college where I was finally able to fully grasp how to write more fluidly and allow readers to understand what I’m putting down. It was the summer of 2017 when my writing skills transformed from a middle school level, to writing with my own sense of diction through the help of my English professor and narratives I read in the text book “Writing About Writing”. Entering college, knowing the lack in writing skills I bare was a little intimidating but I went to class open minded knowing that anything the professor says, I were to implement them to my own writing in order to gain any improvements. On the second day of class where we actually start to learn, my Professor Rachel Molko said “there is no such thing as bad writing”, which I had taken to heart because prior to college all I have been told was that my writing skills sucked. I sat back to really think about what she had said, the first thing that dawned to me was the time when I was a freshman in high school, my class and I had to read “Romeo and Juliet”.

When we were reading the play, I had absolutely no clue what William Shakespeare was on because I didn’t know Linares 2 what he was trying to say or where the play was heading. I thought to myself how Shakespeare wrote in the same style of English for all of his plays, yet his work is placed on to a pedestal to be read to this day. My problem was that teachers would read and grade my work to be perceived as nonproper writing even though I was able to understand what I was writing line for line. But if I were to have read Shakespeare’s work my mind would be as lost as a five-year-old boy alone at Disney world and yet this man’s writing skills are more superior. I then thought about all the poems I had read through years of school and how many of them didn’t make any sense to me but yet they are told to be wonderful pieces of writing. I compared my skills to these types of works because it bothered me knowing I couldn’t grasp what they were saying but all my life I have been told that I am a bad writer. I then came to realize that the works I couldn’t understand are works with authors who have a unique use of diction and would use words indirectly to what they are talking about, a sort of slang in their own way. I decided that I will add my own little slang to my work that happens to be similar to how I talk with my friends. I won’t use profanity in order to maintain a professional work but I will add a comical side to my writing in order to keep the attention of the readers, at the same time keep the purpose of the writing. In my English class I had read multiple writings out the text book “Writing about Writing” and one of which I would say has impacted me the most. There was this writing in my class that we had to read in the text book but for the life of me, I cannot remember the title of it. But while I was reading, the author had mentioned that the way we speak is not the same as how we write and it was something so obvious that it made me feel really dumb. After reading this

section out of the text book I would say that something had really clicked in my head and it made me think about how I have been writing versus how I speak to people. Reflecting back on the writings I had done Linares 3 in the past and observed that each of my lines seemed to be independent in its own like a single statement that does not correlate to the previous sentence. I also observed the way I explain things to people in person, especially if it was something exciting, I would start from the beginning and incorporate many details so the listener can visualize what happened. I thought about the purpose in writing all of these essays and concluded that they are just explanations of readings or a view on certain subject and maybe an event that may have accrued. A solution I had came up with was to write my essays with a little less care, in the sense to try and not to sound like a robot writing line per line. Rather then siting on a single line at a time, I would think about what I’m trying to say as if I were conversating with the reader and incorporate the slang I use with my friends. Even though the author I had read said that there’s a difference in speaking and writing, writing as if I were to speak to people had improved my writing tremendously. At the same time, I strive to incorporate the guidelines of the prompt at hand but the idea of writing as my own allows me to write at my fullest potential. These things may seem very obvious to many ordinary people, but for me, I had to sit down and think what exactly made me write like an idiot. With the help of literacy sponsor such as my Professor Rachel Molko and book “writing about writing”, I was able to morph my literacy skills to a more well excepted piece of work. I would not say that I am content with the way I write because as my professor said “there is no such thing as bad writing” nor do I believe that there is perfect writing....