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

The Struggle to Get it All StraightI.I first began writing--really writing--sometime around my sophomore form of high school. Since then, I have consistently received high marks and flattering compliments for my work. But I still suffer this insecurity which Judith thickening describes perfectly. She says that after achieving great success in her writing she found that she was still telling herself that she wasnt really a writer, only a trickster (xii). Ah, yes. I lie with that feeling. Every 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 full time, that Im nothing but crafty. My undergraduate degree carries with it an emphasis in creative writing for four eld I wrote mostly poetry. I didnt know it, but the poetry courses gave me my first introduction to Rhetorical Theory. There I met the generative techniques of Peter Elbow and Natalie Goldberg which make so much sense to me. I apprehended these exercises, which, as Guest notes, give people permission to think the thoughts that come, and to write them down, and make sense of them in any way they wish (xii). Between the covers of my journal, I took on the premise of Goldbergs book Writing Down the Bones Learning to write is not a linear process.There is no logical A-to-B-to-C way to drop dead a good writer. One neat truth to the highest degree writing cannot answer it all. There are many truths. To do writing practice actor to deal ultimately 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 other English courses, I never felt the freedom that those writing courses offered me--the opportunity 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 wanted to hear. This contradiction between these two types of English courses was something I accepted without question. Two years ago the issue really opened itself up for me. I had been out of school for a few years and was a little nervous about returning to the world of academic writing. That spring quarter I had three writing courses and an American Literature course.