Me as a Writer

Shailee Stokes

4^th Hour Honors English

Me as a Writer

August 31, 2010

            My mother was the first influence on my writing. She was the one to teach me how to write as early as preschool. The first thing I learned was how to spell and write my name correctly. My mom was very positive about the whole situation, even if I struggled tremendously in both my hand writing and spelling. Finally one day I got it down, but still to this day I do tend to struggle with some spelling and my hand writing can get a little sloppy. Practice makes perfect but thank goodness for computers!

            Writing letters to “Santa Claus” as a little kid really helped my writing experiences. By writing letters to Santa, I was able to express my feelings and what I really wanted down on paper. It was also a time to work on my hand writing. I believe writing can sometimes be very challenging, but now as I get older I’m becoming more confident as a writer, thanks to many teachers. I think having to write many different papers in school helped with my writing because I was able to explore different ways to write and also different subjects to write about, not just to make a list and have to check it twice.

            The papers I write depend on the type and also my audience. The people who will be reading my paper or the people I will be reading too, influence my writing.  The type of paper and the audience are important to keep in mind. If I were to write a love letter, my mom probably wouldn’t want to read it. Same thing if I were to write a talk for church my class mates probably would not be interested, making the audience a huge key to my writing.

Due to my ninth grade year, I no longer like to write poetry. I just found myself looking for words that rhyme and not really caring about what the poem said. I hope to change my mind on poetry in the next few years but that is one type of writing I do not like. After my tenth grade year, my favorite paper to write so far has been a research paper. I like how organized you must be and I liked finding out so much on just one subject. It felt like I was actually writing and not just making up sayings that rhymed

            As a writer one thing I would like to improve on is expanding my vocabulary. Using words that I don’t usually use but the most important thing in writing is to have fun while doing it.  My advice is to have a good time while writing your paper and it will become easier.