Personal Narrative: How Writing Has Changed My Life

It is essential to understand that classes taken in grade school do not give students a full understanding of each subject. With the topic of writing, there will always be a new lesson to learn, an aspect to improve, or a differing way to explain. Author Craig Vetter states in Bonehead Writing, “This is your enemy: a perfectly empty sheet of paper. Nothing will ever happen here except what you make happen.” Each story, essay, or response comes from a writer’s experiences. With each attempt at a new piece comes an underlying story of emotions the writer is facing. Each person’s writing is unique and the ideas people have are related to their past experiences and what they believe to be familiar with when deciding which writing style to use. As a high school student, I have learned many things about writing that helped me become the improved writer I am today, but the most essential advice I have received is practice makes perfect. Although there is no actual perfect way of writing, I have discovered that each essay I write, my writing improves. It is easier to spot mistakes, find areas to improve, and ponder elevated word choice to use.

Prior to my development of routine introspection and, consequently, maturation, I wrote not to encapsulate my ever-growing discomfort towards life, but rather to gain praise and acknowledgement for my efforts in writing. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I sat on the floor of my kindergarten classroom criss-cross applesauce-style as my teacher, Mrs. Glickman, asked the class to write a short story and to provide an illustration to accompany it. With smudged and disorderly speckles of graphite sprawled across my paper, I managed to write a story in my signature chicken-scratch handwriting. The story was relatively simple, about a girl who had thought she was a hideous monster until she looked into a river reflection and realized she was beautiful. I even drew (or attempted to draw) a beautiful girl for the second part of the assignment. At the next school assembly, Mrs. Glickman granted me a sky-colored paper, reading “Award of Recognition: Kiana Lucin, for her creative writing and exemplary drawing skills.” From this point on, I prided myself in writing, and excelled

Everyone knows what writing is to one extent or another, but we all have different definitions of how it should be done and varying degrees of seriousness about the art. We all have a process of writing, but each is unique to ourselves and our own experiences. Annie Dillard and Stephen King are two well known authors who have published many pieces, two of which describe how they view the writing process and let their readers get a peek of what goes on through their minds when they write. These two pieces are Dillard’s The Writing Life and King’s “What Writing Is.”

Reflecting on my life as a means of deciding on a topic, one time period struck me as particularly important in terms of writing itself: my second year of second grade. Moving to Poway in 2007, the first class I was in was Mrs. Ramin’s 2-3 combo at Painted Rock. I had purple wire-rim glasses, a brown Hello Kitty tracksuit, two friends, and a hatred of writing. This was particularly unfortunate for young Analise, since Mrs. Ramin’s main focus was writing. She encouraged her students to write daily, setting aside 20-60 minutes each day for it. Although I hated it at first, my passion for creative writing grew as I turned my love for my sister and for Webkinz into tales of adventure and peril parallel to my then favorite series, Magic Tree House. I wrote, drew, and colored whatever my seven-year-old imagination spun for me. After that spark, the fire of writing died down to a smolder until eighth grade, when I wrote my first successful essay, “Flowers for Algernon: A Comparative Essay On How Two Versions of the Story are like

My writing has improved greatly over the years. Now, I am able to write much longer papers, my writing is more detailed, my writing is straight, I am able to write in different styles, and my letters aren't shaped weirdly anymore. All and all, my writing has improved a good amount. I still do not enjoy writing that much. I am really enjoying math and science right now. The writing that I do like, is writing about a subject that I choose with no guidelines. My past writing pieces that I have done, have been the personal narrative (in 6th grade), and the researched based writing project (also in 6th grade). Both of those projects I did not enjoy that much, because we worked on those two projects for a long time. Even thought I do not enjoy writing

As I read the comments on my Instagram post, I laugh. I had posted a picture from when I was little, so of course, my friends had to make sarcastic comments on it. While I was reading them I noticed words like “lol”, “tho”, and “bc”. I was five in the picture and I was not taught to write like that. No one was. We were taught to read beyond our level, write grammatically correct, spell right, and speak clearly. Well at least that was what my sister, Riley, taught me when we turned her bedroom into a classroom and played school. Riley is two years ahead of me in school. When she would come home, she would teach me what she learned that day. I loved playing school and it gave me an appreciation for reading and writing because we did it for fun. This also allowed me to strive for more than average since she was teaching me things the others wouldn’t learn for a couple of years.

Through all of my accomplishments and disappointments, I have always been especially proud of the dedication and passion I have for my personal beliefs and values. If there is no struggle, there is no progress, with drive and a bit of hard work you can move mountains. Based on hard work and success, it goes hand in hand because life is designed to be tough. When I was 14 years old, I realized how important writing is in our everyday life. I realized that writing was something important in my life and it has changed my personal life. In my freshman year in High School during “Career Day,” one of the presenter who was a writer, helped me understand how important writing is.

What I was writing was not as important to me as how I made it look. That's where all my time and focus was spent. I was given a good opportunity to get into writing in the years that followed fifth grade. This opportunity was given to me in the form of journal writing in junior high (grades 6,7, and 8). A few people every day would read their journal out loud and you can tell that some of them really got into. I however, am sorry to say I let the chance pass me by. The journals had a given subjects to write about but they weren't mandatory. I remember this one kid, Peter. Instead of writing about the journal topic he would write a Star Wars story. This other kid, Joey, reminded me of "Pinky and The Brain." He would always write about ways to try and take over the world-again and again. Looking back I wish I had been as creative as those two young men. Instead I blew off the journal writing. To me it was just another busy work assignment.

As Vickie Karp once said, “When we read, we start at the beginning and continue until we reach the end. When we write, we start in the middle and fight our way out.” At an early age, writing gave solace. My first exposure to writing was through journaling. In my elementary years, my parents separated, leaving my brother and me in the eye of the storm. At the age of ten, I only understood so much, but I did know how much my mother and father detested each other on a regular basis. Objects and harsh words established the darkness and fear in the corner of my mind. Once father left home, before I even had a chance to say goodbye, I felt abandoned and alone. The anxiety of my mother leaving me and struck with depression of already been abandoned

I was born Sarah Jessica Taylor Caudill on a cold night in January, 15 years ago, at Baptist East. A bit funny, because I only go by Sarah when teachers force me to and I loathe Baptist East. I was named after an actress but I'm terrible at acting; I write. If writing didn't exist, I wouldn't either. If I couldn't make people feel things with words on a piece of paper, I wouldn't do anything at all. A world without words wouldn't be a world worth living in.

The first time I did something that changed me from how acted and think was when I read a book. It was around 6th grade on a Friday, we were assigned to read a book over the weekend and complete a summary over the book. My Language Arts teacher, Mrs. Wonnell, had a bunch of books on her desk. We had to go get them off of her desk and pick which one we wanted. She called us up one by one to pick out a book that we would like.

This is a story about how reading, and writing changed my life drastically for good. During my journey, I have received lots of knowledge of reading, and writing, yet still learning. I am a bilingual student and I was born in November,1,1994, Cuba. My main language is Spanish, and the second one is English. Everything started When I was three years old, and the first thing that I learned it was the alphabet. My mother taught me the alphabet herself along the numbers, but that is another story. However, I learned in an unorthodox way. I learned backwards the alphabet starting with "O-Z" first, then I learned the rest which is "A-N." At that point, I put them all together. The earliest years of my life, reading played a huge part of my life leading

The night air felt uncomfortably damp, and my neighborhood was exceptionally quiet as I locked the front door. If I walked at a brisk pace, I might make it to the library before it’s closed.

Writing has always played a huge role in my life. I’ve been reading writing for as long as I can remember as I have an immense love of reading. This love would grow into a love for writing as well; I still stumble upon journals and writings from my five-year-old self about the happenings in my kindergarten class. As time would go on I would discover academic writing, and how to convey my thoughts on what was the topic of student that particular year or semester in my schooling. Later, writing would become a constant for me, and a comfort; I was known to my friends as always having a journal, and a pen on my person. I learned to write down my feelings and my thoughts, song lyrics that were in my head, reflections for the day. I learned how

Writing has always been something I dread. It’s weird because I love talking and telling stories, but the moment I have to write it all down on paper, I become frantic. It’s almost as if a horse race just begun in my mind, with hundreds of horses, or words, running through my mind, unable to place them in chronological order. Because I struggle to form satisfying sentence structure, it takes me hours, sometimes even days, to write one paper. It’s not that I think I’m a “bad writer,” I just get discouraged easily. Needless to say, I don’t think highly of my writing skills. When I was little I loved to both read and write. I read just about any book I could get my hands on, and my journal was my go to for my daily adventures. Although it’s