My Life As A Writer

Improved Essays
One thing about teaching other how to write is letting them write about a topic that they are passionate about. When I was in high school our writing was very structured… outline, rough draft, and finally our final essay. I don’t believe that is the way writing should be. The reason I believe writing should be taught like that comes straight from personal experience. When I was forced to write so organized; which can be very helpful but I didn’t feel it was helpful in this setting; in my senior English class, I didn’t thrive. The reason for that was because the topics I was forced to write about were things I wasn’t interested in; therefore, I didn’t want to give it my all. Another reason why it was really hard for me to write high school essays …show more content…
It’s step one, step two, back to step one to fix some ideas and then again to step two, over and over again until the final writing piece is exactly where the writer wants it to be. Murray talks about the writing process in her essay, “The writing process itself can be divided into three stages: prewriting, writing, and rewriting. The amount of time that a writer spends in each stage depends on his personality, his work habits, his maturity as a craftsman, and the challenge of what he is trying to say…” (Murray). He then goes on to say that each step isn’t going to be perfectly polished, but that is the beauty of writing because when you write it gives the writer to understand what he/she needs to improve, until eventually the writer is satisfied with their piece. In the essay ‘Shitty First Drafts’ Lamott says, “Very few writers really know what they are doing until they have done it…They do not type a few stiff warm-up sentences and then find themselves bounding along like huskies across the snow…” (Lamott). The great thing about being able to write first, second and third drafts is the fact that they can be awful because no one is going to see them except for you, it’s a safe space to let all of your worst ideas out. Until one day you’re looking through you’re one hundred worst ideas and you discover your best idea, then you run with it. Even then it will take a lot of time to develop that idea into something worth turning in or

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    It shows the audience that even the most experienced writers start with nothing but a jumble of unorganized thoughts. Lamott also uses this personal experience to let the readers into her thought process. Not only does Lamott lower herself to the writer’s aspect of things by saying how she has a hard time writing too, but the readers can also see how she deals with it. Throughout, readers begin to realize that professional writers aren 't as perfect as they seem. Lots of people believe professional writers are perfect from the first draft all the way to the…

    • 706 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    When reading The Everyday Writer, written by Andrea A. Lunsford, director of the program in writing and rhetoric at Stanford University, I realized the importance of revising and reviewing of writing. Learning the process of writing will help greatly; therefore, assignments in the future will be more advanced and proper. In fact, peer editing is a fantastic strategy for the perfect paper; sometimes when one edits their own work they might overlook a few things, having someone else edit the paper gives another perspective to the writing. Being open to another opinion and attaining other opinions can open the mind to improve the writing. Seaman High School, where I attend, offers the Writing Center, ran by students and staff is to help improve…

    • 195 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “The Maker’s Eye” In the article “The Maker’s Eye” by Donald Murray, the author explains the aspects of rewriting and how writing isn't a one step process. Most professional writers live by the phrase “writing is rewriting.” One of Murray’s idea is about the importance of revision that plays a big role in becoming a better writer. Murray mentions Peter F. Drucker, a prolific business writer, who claims that his first draft is “the zero draft.”…

    • 263 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A voliant quake shakes the ground knocking the guardian off there balance. As a bolder collides with the earth that held it and shattered it leaving an indent into the now soft earth. Humanity is trying its best to hold everything together. “We should get moving, they're getting closer.” the dying ghost says.…

    • 756 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The way Lamott explains how a first draft is the down draft, is something I find very interesting, yet struggle with in my own writing. I often struggle with being emotionally stable towards my work; never thinking it is good enough. At times it’s pure bliss and excitement over the creation which I have achieved, and other times its immense hatred toward the writing, or the assignment alike. I often struggle with simply getting my ideas down on paper no matter how incoherent they sound. When I take the time to prepare really rough first draft, get all my thoughts on paper, and revise, my stress level is severely reduced, and my emotions, along with paper quality, are greatly enhanced.…

    • 779 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    My Literacy Autobiography

    • 984 Words
    • 4 Pages

    My English professor made me write a minimum of five pages for an essay and I never wrote over three pages since high school. This course was a challenge for me, but it also taught me the value to writing. The more papers I wrote in college made my views change on writing. Writing became a secondary voice for me, it wasn’t difficult for me to write about what I knew or either what was near and dear to my heart. Although I respect writing, it is still something that I still struggle with till this day.…

    • 984 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    When writing, I struggle with many things. One of my hardest struggles is grammar and meeting word minium requirements. When writing I get distracted by trying to keep up with the word count, and lose focus on everything else that is just as important than the amount of words that I am required to have. Throughout my years of writing, I was taught to, first write everything down that comes to mind while our juices are flowing. After, I use this technic, then shortly after I run out of thoughts and my paper turns into crap.…

    • 216 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    For example, She describes how when she was writing food reviews for California, the only way to complete the reviews was to first write a shitty first draft. On third drafts, you really focus on your purpose, voice, and grammar. She said that is okay to write shitty first drafts, then you can fix it up on second drafts, and third drafts you can check every tooth to make it final drafts. In the “Go Carolina” article, It is about David Sedaris’ life experiences.…

    • 831 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Shitty First Drafts" by Anne Lamott states everybody should write shitty first drafts to make their writing better, but many people tend to think successful writers only write their writing once. Anne Lamott says people don 't understand that all great writers write many shitty drafts before they have their final draft. Good writers write first drafts to put everything in their mind on their paper. She says its good to write shitty first drafts because first drafts are child drafts. When you are writing…

    • 700 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    To me, writing has always been busy work and something that teachers only used to create grades. My writing experience in high school was very limited to one category in: practice AP essays. The writing I did in class was always preparing for AP exams and was very fact based. Most essays, such as history, were only used to show that I knew the material and weren’t graded on how good the writing was. I didn’t feel like I had any freedom to stray away from the format that the AP graders expected because I didn’t want that to affect my score.…

    • 712 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Writing Process Steps

    • 631 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Steps to the Writing Process Have you ever written a paper and followed the writing process correctly? There are five major steps and many small details that go into writing a paper. The paper can be easily written if the simple steps to the writing process are followed. The first step to the writing process is pre-write, the step where ideas are formed.…

    • 631 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As we all know, the final Unit assignment is a personal reflection about what I’ve learned and who I am as a writer. In my opinion, only talking about everything I learned can be really a boring thing, I prefer to talk more about myself, my changes throughout the semester. After all, most of people like biographies much more than academic reports. You should know, readers, as a writer, I have an obvious difference from others. I’m an international student, come from China.…

    • 1436 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The writing process is different and unique to all individuals; many people follow the ideal steps of prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing as opposed to others taking shortcuts, skipping steps, and going straight to editing. The writing process is the course one takes to get from prewriting to the publication of their essay; since everyone is a different, their writing process will also be different. For me, I believe that following the ideal writing process steps are a tremendous help to organizing my essay and spacing out the work throughout the time the assignment is assigned. To begin writing an essay I must first prewrite; to prewrite is to brainstorm ideas from the prompt by outlining, diagramming, clusterings, or…

    • 1542 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A couple of months ago, I wrote about how I struggle to create an interesting hook that captures my professor’s attention. Here I am, multiple months later and I still struggle to write the perfect hook. Am I okay with that? Actually, yes, because I know I grew in many other areas during this course. I believe I have progressed more than I have in any other English class.…

    • 1320 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Over the course of this semester I learned a handful of things about myself as a writer, that will help me develop as a more proficient writer over the course of my four years here. As a writer one of my strengths is backing up my argument with solid and concrete evidence that truly makes the reader believe what they are reading. Another area of my writing that I excel in is being able to process great ideas that follow the guidelines and the prompt. With that being said I have also seen that while the ideas may come with ease, I do have a challenging time with getting the ideas from my head onto paper in a manner that isn’t so disorganized that it makes the reader second guess themselves. Another shaky part of my writing comes much before the actual forming of sentences.…

    • 1262 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics