A Reflection on Myself as a Writer

I don’t think I have ever fully realized how much I actually use certain writing techniques when composing essays for classes or even just writing by myself in my diary. As self-centered as it may come across, I’m interested in myself as a writer a lot more now than I have ever been before. Mainly because I’ve never really had the need to evaluate myself in such detail. I’ve discovered that I thrive when I’m able to write about topics that I can personally identify with, such as a historic event or when I am writing in my diary about my inner thoughts and feelings. When writing for myself, I never fully know what I am going to end up writing on a page until I’ve been able to create a paragraph and foster further ideas. Moreover, even when I have been assigned a writing piece I have struggled when planning and often just allow for my mind to do all the work before setting my pen to paper. In addition, I also find myself doing repetitive essay structures and steps, such as writing out multiple ideas in bullet form, then from this creating topic sentences which eventually can be fleshed out into paragraphs. Although I believe I have attributes of efficient writing skills, I know that I still have room for improvement to better my writing skills through all of this.

Growing up, literacy was simply something that encircled me and not just standard education. What I mean from this is that life experiences and communication with others taught me so much more. It made me realize that there was more to life and writing itself than what I was being taught in a four walled classroom. Fortunately for me, I was provided with a strong education and attended a top English school in South Africa, which I took full advantage of. What I found is that, in the classroom I am able to concentrate efficiently on the ongoing lesson and then be able to go home and write thoroughly for required homework straight off the bat. It was always interesting to me that I could be able to put words on a piece of paper and eventually process them into a formulated answer. Moreover, writing down my own feelings or personal opinions.

Analysis of writing needs to be considered as this has given me a new perspective on writing. However, It definitely was not something that was fun at times and could become extremely strenuous. Throughout many years, I never really had an interest for the readings or work of Shakespeare that were assigned to me in school and definitely did not enjoy having to do responses that were assigned. I often found myself wording my answers slightly different than my classmates or having an entirely opposite perspective towards the topic. This caused for me to dislike writing a lot because I felt as if I was not understanding what the rest of my classmates were getting. However, it must be mentioned that I did however find an interest for the Greek portion of literature assigned to us. I found it to be so exciting in being able to learn the context and have the ability to respond to ancient Greek mythology, ideas and ultimately have a present-day opinion on a culture that is thousands of years old. In addition, I also discovered what my true interests were when I wasn’t given reading books and had the option to choose a novel or article out of free will. I found myself being able to read 10 pages or starting a new chapter without even realizing it and being utterly captivated. For me that’s a good crime or history, as I am really interested in these themes and after reading, I find myself relating or comparing myself to a character that I have identified with.

Growing up many values, ideas and perspectives are continuously shifting and nothing ever really remains the same in my point of view. The reading and text that we have encountered this semester have really helped me to understand what literacy sponsors are and what they can provide for us. I am grateful enough to have had the literacy sponsors that I did, as many people were not given this opportunity. As a child, my mother would always read to me at night and what I never fully grasped then was that it was not only just a great bedtime story but rather a lesson and gateway for my literacy skills that I hold today. Moreover, social media and technology is now an influential and huge part of modern society. I am constantly surrounded by it in terms of, social media, online news, games, Ebooks, emails and so much more. From this, it is easy to say that literacy has taken on a new form with the influence of technology. What I have found is that not only is it necessary to be literate in reading, but also have a fundamental knowledge of how to work any form of technology and a thorough knowledge to be able to use it to your best ability. If you observe or ask anyone, we now live in a decade that when we go to school now, almost everyone has laptops, Ipads, tablets and smart books in front of them. It seems as though our younger generation aquires technology to learn everything, though it wasn’t always like that. As for me, I’m fortunate enough to be able to also understand traditional/older literacy with just books and have an appreciation for them, but I also greatly appreciate technology because it makes things simpler and I get to keep on learning in a new era of which technology is heavily invested in.

On the topic of literacy sponsors, I’ve come to the understanding through all of our readings given this semester that literacy sponsors are almost everywhere in our lives. Anything and anyone can inspire and motivate you to become better at something leave you with a sense of encouragement to achieve more. My personal literacy sponsors complex with many being positive whilst others being negative which all in all has only made me want to be a better writer because I wanted a challenge to prove them wrong. A few of my literacy sponsors weren’t even people but new ideas and concepts that caused for me to think from another viewpoint. Once I am able to grasp the idea to write a good essay for an assignment, the job is easy as I become very absorbed in the topic and am able to give my best input towards the topic. A literacy sponsor I will never be able to forget was my history teacher throughout my junior and senior years of high school. Ms Kholopane made it fun and captivating to read and write about history, which is how I ultimately learn best. My teacher was passionate about what we taught and shared with us, not to mention hilarious and gave my class and I both sides of a story allowing for us to be able to decide which stance we wanted to lean more towards. History was my favorite subject for those academic years and it definitely helped shape me to become a better student as well as a writer. My older sister is also a great literacy sponsor in my life. She would always encourage me to read a book in my spare time or share with me information about a book she was excited or reading about. She would constantly tell me about what books to read and then once I had finished the book we would go back and forth about the novel. This has helped introduce me to writing that I would most likely have never gone about on my own, ultimately supporting me in broadening my range of literature and yet again bettering me as a writer.

During my college years I will hopefully begin to adopt better habits for writing and to become more productive and organized allowing for my writing to be a more easy and enjoyable experience. I thoroughly appreciated the quote from Shitty First Drafts “The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later” (Lamott 2011). Here, Lamott made it plain and simple that no writing is perfect and mine definitely doesn’t have to be on my first draft or even my second one. All of my ideas can be written down without much articulate thought or organization because as long as it ends up on the page, I know that I can correct it later. This is a concept that I believe I should start practicing, as in high school at times I would skip the rough draft process entirely and completely jump into writing a final paper with thoughts going around in my head, ultimately leaving me no room for little editing and reflection to on what would make my paper good. This made me to have no interest towards the topics and I plan to now make a habit of breaking this by the end of semester.

Writing about myself was always nothing but boring at some point, but right now it’s interesting because of the new information that I’ve read as well as learned. It makes me question, how much better can I become at writing? Which has made me realize I’ve also got a long way to go. In conclusion, I know that each essay I do will make me better and more dedicated eventually paying off so that I can become a better writer. 

Works Cited

1. Bean, J. C. (2016). Engaging ideas: The professor's guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom (3rd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
2. Elbow, P. (2017). Writing without teachers (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
3. Freedman, A., & Medway, P. (Eds.). (1994). Learning and teaching genre. Boynton/Cook.
4. Lamott, A. (2011). Bird by bird: Some instructions on writing and life. Anchor Books.
5. Lunsford, A. A., & Lunsford, K. J. (2017). Everyone's an author (2nd ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.
6. McCloud, S. (1994). Understanding comics: The invisible art. HarperPerennial.
7. Pinker, S. (2014). The sense of style: The thinking person's guide to writing in the 21st century. Viking.
8. Strunk, W., Jr., White, E. B., & Angell, R. (2000). The elements of style (4th ed.). Longman.
9. Swales, J. M., & Feak, C. B. (2012). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills (3rd ed.). University of Michigan Press.
10. Zinsser, W. (2016). On writing well: The classic guide to writing nonfiction (30th anniversary edition). HarperPerennial.