Nick Last Name
English 1
Dr.Who
Literacy
Narrative Essay Revision
I
feel like my own writing has evolved quite a lot through this past year. I feel
like this for multiple reasons; such as just opening my mind more whenever I do
write instead of just stating things. I’ve been writing for a while just
whenever I can or have nothing to do I actually will write. From that
experience you get from writing different things every day it opens you up a
lot and makes you realize how all these different things sound and flow
together. I’m going to talk about just that for now: how all of that experience
came to me.
Basically
the first time I actually wrote something serious was for this one person in 8th
grade but like I’ve said before it was when I first started and it sounded
really cheesy. After that I wrote very
little. I would write something only when it was like an idea for a movie
script or something, which was not too often. I later graduated from my old
school and because it was summer all I could really do was watch TV, play
guitar or bass, or walk outside somewhere. Really the only exciting that that
happened was my best friend’s quinceanera and that’s about it. That being said
I was pretty introverted for a good 2 or 3 months and had all that time for
free time with practically nothing to do.
About
a few weeks before I left my old school I had listened to the first solo album
from the Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante “Niandra Lades &
Usually Just a T-shirt”. When I was first hearing it I thought it sounded bad
and thought nothing of it and that it was just nothing what I expected. But
getting back on the timeline of summer I relisted to it and started to see more
of it. It was very weird music and there was something about it that I really
liked. The thing about that album was the way I could feel he put something
creative into it. Nothing else have I heard before that was like what he had
written. It was a genre I’ve never heard and the lyrics were so unique in a positive
or negative way depending on what you like. But I loved everything about it. I
thought it was the most perfect music and it had so much soul into it and you
could hear him flipping the notebook pages to read the other lyrics and you
could hear everything as if he was just right there. There was barely any
editing and I really liked the sound of it so I started to admire it. Admiring
it to the point where it was something I listened to everyday for months.
Because
of the love I shared for this music I began to write like it during the summer.
Every day of the week I would work more and more on guitar and lyrics and
trying to find out what things sounded the best. I never got too into singing
during this time, just humming what I had written down over a song. I would
commonly write things without good rhyming schemes and things that had
particularly no meaning at all. If I thought something sounding good it went
down and I put little thought into it. I just liked the fact that I was doing
something. I progressively wrote better and put at least some thought into
things but not as much as I could of. There was nothing really special about
most things I did write because there was almost absolute nothingness on
symbolism or patterns. Most things I wrote were almost absolutely focused on
cacophony and occasionally euphony depending on what I’m writing about.
Everything had enjambments and caesuras. Not on purpose though. It was just
something that naturally occurs. If I wanted to go on with something longer I
would and if I didn’t I wouldn’t.
About
halfway through the summer I got back in contact with a friend of mine who also
writes and plays music as if it’s all he does. Not so much writing, but he
played a lot of more average sounding music than I wanted to such as your
standard Black Keys, Jack White or Muse sounding stuff. He’ll even sing just as
well as them which was incredible to me. Being friends with him again sort of
re-opened my “good music is not only one musical artist” part of my brain and I
began listening to my old things which was good and bad. Since I can say that I
sort of stopped writing or doing anything that has to do with my music as often
about at that over halfway point in the summer and just completely ignored the
thought of it for no real good reason in particular.
Then
when I was finally back in school at Episcopal. I was at that point where I
still didn’t write as much if I ever did. Now in this English class we are
expected to have good literate writing skills which I was not very good at at
the beginning of the year. I would sort of go back to how I would write in
computer class when I was in middle school which is total mumbo jumbo. Because
that was unacceptable if I wanted to get a good grade I had to start writing
normally and honestly did not feel like doing anything at all revolving around
working. It was all forced and I just didn’t feel like doing it because I could
seriously mentally not make myself do what I need to for school. It wasn’t that
I was lazy and it wasn’t that I didn’t care for school it was just because I
felt so tired with having to do all these things. I’ve been trying lately to
get things in on time but I’m really struggling with it, I don’t know why. But
even when I do write something for school now it’s not as interesting as
something should be. I basically just tried to get a good grade and write in
proper English again which was a total drab.
In
about spring break I started writing some more things. Surprised with how much
I remember from before and being able to write all these new ideas that came
from experience. I think I’ve made maybe about 3 or 4 a day. Because I’m in
school I haven’t been doing it yet again but just a few things; usually for a
picture or description of something. Ever since I restarted it it’s much more
eye opening than before. I don’ know what I was doing before but now I actually
can put things that relate to real life things using all sorts of different
techniques. I don’t keep track of the techniques I use but I like to use a lot
of imagery and metaphors and personification. I have started to pick up the
symbolizing technique where you make something about something but that
something is another something. I would have to say that around that time not
too long ago I started to make something that came from me and not just a rip
off type thing. Even though there isn’t much to write about I always think
there is something to write about. I think a lot and writing it down in a
formal way seems very natural. I’ll typically stay away from your traditional
‘plots’ to what I write. I don’t really think it would be very expressive to
write a love song or about how great I am like a lot of famous people do. But
instead you can write about more than just movie scripts or songs but even mathematics
if you’re really that bored but that’s not the point. The point here is that I
went from bad writer, to still bad writer, to normal person, to myself. I
figured out how to put those thoughts in your mind on paper like I was supposed
to. It just feels like I can write the way my brain wants me and I think a lot
of people should because it’s really possible to become good at it in your own
way, you just have to find it yourself.
About what I did:
For this revision I focused especially on the traits
of ideas and organization. As for ideas I’m not sure if I “cheated” or not but
I added more events that occurred after I had written the original essay for
this because I felt there was more to talk about and because it’s easier for me
to write about my current self than past. Considering I had more events to
write about it’s easier to not go on and on talking about one insignificant
event. As for organization I found that much of my original Literacy Narrative
was mostly focused on two different events or times with little to no
transition between different settings or details. So during this revision I
focused on moving from one subject to another without causing confusion for the
reader and including less detail for the small events that I talked about and
more on what was actually important in the paper which was how my writing has improved
over a course of time. It really bothered me how I went on about events in my
life instead of actually how well I have improved writing so I feel like that
was something I could easily improve on now that I’m more used to writing what
was assigned to write about as well as being more knowledgeable on what my
English papers should look like.
As far as the writing center meeting I went to I
honestly don’t think we discussed what I should improve nearly as much as what
I had decided myself while alone. The furthest we really went into was talking
about grammar and organization but almost nothing on the actual information on
the paper. That being said I think it was useful to get an opinion on what
sounded more fluent in my paper and I’m thankful for that but I honestly think
it wasn’t too necessary. It was helpful but barely helpful enough to be a
necessity for this project. I could have discussed more at the writing center
but by the time I had a meeting I had already gotten my mind straight on what I
was doing and all we did was agree on how those things would be helpful.
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