The Write Way to Do Things

     I don't know if I'd consider myself to be a writer. At the risk of boasting, I'd say I'm a good writer, but I'm not a writer, if that makes any sense at all. A writer, to me, is someone who enjoys writing and spends a good amount of time (maybe an hour or two a day, at least) doing it, whether it be stories, essays, articles, etc., whereas a good writer doesn't necessarily have to spend a lot of time writing; he or she simply produces medium- to high-quality work when he or she writes. To clarify, I enjoy writing sometimes, depending on what I'm writing. I don't like writing essays at all, but it's one of my strong points. I really enjoy writing fiction and personal narratives, but I spend hardly any time doing that outside of homework assignments.

     I would definitely say I prefer writing to drawing, however. When I was younger, teachers would ask us (the students) to draw pictures of random things (e.g., my family or siblings). I was always the one to raise my hand and ask if I could write about it instead. I'm not an artist, nor am I a good artist. The picture below illustrates my point. :)

Writing v. Drawing? Writing wins every time.

     When I was in fourth grade, my teacher was constantly assigning writing projects. I wrote personal narratives, poems, fiction stories, etc.; you name it, I wrote it. Looking back on it, I'm glad I have the stories, but, at the time, I got tired of it. I'm glad she had me write so much, though, because it made my writing stronger. Besides homework, though, I didn't do much writing. I wrote in a journal every once in a while and wrote letters to people occasionally, but that's about it. It's basically the same now. I write in my journal, less than every once in a while, and I write e-mails instead of letters. Facebook posts are a rarity. Any other writing I do is usually homework-related.

     As I said, I've never particularly enjoyed writing essays, research papers, or literary analyses, for that matter. They're simply no fun. I always procrastinated them, finding 700 other things to do before forcing myself to sit down and write (maybe that's why I didn't like them, because I always waited until the last minute). However, I would be lying if I said I'll never assign them to my students. One of the biggest parts of writing those kinds of papers is making a point or argument and then defending it with proof or evidence. Being able to do that effectively will help my students for the rest of their lives, so I'll have to teach them how to do it one way or another. I'll intersperse those assignments with other writing assignments that they'll hopefully enjoy (I guess some may enjoy essays and research papers, but I think that will be the exception more than the norm), like creative fiction stories, personal narratives, free verse poems, etc.; those assignments allow students to be more original in what they write, and they're not tied to a certain text or material. I think I just like freedom in writing, and I prefer not to write about someone else's writing.

     I'm kind of excited about the huge expansion of technology that's happening, and I'm hoping to learn more about all of it so that I can allow my students to express themselves in different ways (like this blog!!).