The Struggle to Get it All Straight :: Personal Narrative Writing Papers

The Struggle to Get it All StraightI.I first began writing-- genuinely writing--sometime around my sophomore year of high school. Since then, I obligate consistently received high marks and flattering compliments for my work. still I still suffer this insecurity which Judith Guest describes perfectly. She says that after achieving enceinte success in her writing she found that she was still telling herself that she wasnt really a writer, but a trickster (xii). Ah, yes. I discern that feeling. any paper I am asked to write, I fear will be my undoing--that it will be the assignment which proves that I havent been able to write the intact time, that Im nothing but crafty. My undergraduate degree carries with it an emphasis in productive writing for four years I wrote mostly poetry. I didnt know it, but the poetry courses gave me my first introduction to Rhetorical Theory. in that respect I met the generative techniques of Peter Elbow and Natalie Goldberg which make so much inst inct to me. I appreciated these exercises, which, as Guest notes, give people permission to rally the thoughts that come, and to write them down, and make sense of them in any way they call (xii). Between the covers of my journal, I took on the premise of Goldbergs book Writing voltaic pile the Bones Learning to write is not a linear process.There is no logical A-to-B-to-C way to become a good writer. sensation neat truth about writing cannot answer it all. There be many truths. To do writing practice means to deal at last with your whole life. (3) Because I understood the idea without understanding the possibilities, these courses didnt change my life--instead they were a reprieve from real life, a reprieve from the the standards of real academics. Although I enjoyed otherwise English courses, I never felt the freedom that those writing courses offered me--the hazard to create my own understanding from a personal perspective. Instead I wrote the essays about subject matter, and in the kind of language, I thought those teachers valued to hear. This contradiction between these two types of English courses was something I accepted without question. both years ago the issue really opened itself up for me. I had been out of school for a few years and was a lower-ranking nervous about returning to the world of academic writing. That spring turd I had three writing courses and an American Literature course.