Before starting this class, I wouldn’t understand what a theory of writing would be. Writing at the time would be just writing down what was required and that was it. Writing for me is a lot of work, trying to get a point through, and trying to engage the reader if possible. I never really liked writing. Writing for me was usually stress and constantly rereading what I wrote to make sense of the gibberish I typed down. Procrastination was always there, as I never wanted to write and think at the same time. I never knew what I really wanted to write, as there were many ways to approach an assignment. I never had an outline, always writing down what I had in mind. Of course, there are certain things that an assignment might want you to touch on, but besides that, I’ve never had the need to have an outline and to plan ahead.

However, during senior year of high school, my teacher let the whole class write what they wanted with only a few criterias. It was at that point that I found creative writing to be a fun way to create and sculpt a world of your own. It was more apparent for me that writing played an important role in other media, such as movies and television shows. Because of various creative works my high school senior teacher assigned to the class, it made me a bit more grateful for authors of creative works and reminded me of how fun creative writing can be.

From coming to this class, it made me see writing in another perspective. From the beginning of the class, rhetorical terms were an important aspect of the assignments. From reading the terms, such as audience, genre, medium, tone, and purpose, it made me think about how adjusting my writing can change each aspect of rhetorical terms, and change how your writing affected certain audiences, its purpose, and more. Different assignments from class has reinforced this concept of rhetorical terms, allowing me to plan ahead and decide how my writing piece will turn out.

When I used to plan a writing piece, I would think about the topic and how to introduce it to my reader. But with now knowing rhetorical devices, I am able to look beyond introducing my topic to my reader and write about potential purposes that I can direct towards certain audiences or a broad audience. Comparing my writing from a few years back to my writing now, I feel that I have a better sense of direction towards what I want to write. I am able to oversee and plan out how my writing piece will turn out, assigning it specific goals that I want my writing piece to achieve. Brainstorming involves more thought now, as there is more information that I can use.

Even though I’ve done and went through a lot of research papers and creative writing, I still don’t think writing is for me. Writing made my brain felt like it was squeezing itself to produce sentences and words that work well together and flow throughout the entire writing piece. So far, I feel the writing process for me is mind numbing. There is effort needed to write what you want and to write to fit the criteria or restrictions. Because of the nature of writing, there is always room for improvement, making you always double check and triple check your work. This at first led to me wondering if I had done a good job or not, but I soon came to realize that I whatever I wrote down was good enough and I probably did an alright job.

Another class I took was psychology. It required papers to be written, answering questions and creating your own analysis and experiments. Although it was called a paper, I found myself just mindlessly answering questions and not actually creating a flow. This for me was somewhat easier than typically writing assignments, as it was basically answering questions in a list format.

I do agree that from previous writing works that I’ve done, I’ve grown as a writer. It made me realize that writing is not easy and the final results can be satisfying. Writing allows you to bring your thoughts out on paper. Writing can change people’s minds and influence crowds. Writing is essential to create a good story and narrative. Writing can allow someone to clear their thoughts and relax. From the writing that I’ve done and seen, I’ve come to realize that writing is like an art. But from all I’ve experienced, I’ve come to realize that writing is not for me.

From all the progress I’ve went through during this semester, I still feel my theory of writing is a challenge. One of the reasons for not having a clear description is my relent to writing. I’ve never really liked writing during elementary school and I did not like it during high school. Writing for me is tedious and only during brief moments, is somewhat pleasant. I can see that writing is supposed to be challenging. Even though I’ve written in my entire life, I don’t find myself picking up a pencil and writing during my free time. It is easier to write what an assignment tells you to. I guess this is my theory of writing.