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Alyssa Pena

ENC 110/Personal narrative

9 October 2017

Writing About My Writing

Writing often changes our life and the way we see things, but for me writing means so

much more. At this point in my life I can actually say I appreciate writing. My appreciation for

writing comes as a shock considering writing school papers normally keeps me from my Friday

night plans, as I write in a panic to meet the 11:59 deadline. We are surrounded by written texts

from the day we are born starting with our names on our birth certificate. But actual written text

is so little of what writing actually is. Text is not just written works, every situation is considered

to be a text. Situations in which we are learning, working, or teaching are the texts that make up

our lives, texts influence and foreshadow our life events. When told to write a literacy

narrative I could think of numerous personal narratives, but none seemed as important as my

writing narrative. As a child I drew pictures to communicate, but with writing communication

was changed forever.

When reading a sign or writing down a quick note, I never think about every letter or

word Im writing down. The words, phrases, and sentences I read or write come to me without

hesitation from years of practice, but how did I get to this point. Its crazy to think there was a

time when I read a sign and it had no meaning to me because I was not able to read yet and this

is exactly where I remember my writing journey beginning. Growing up I would ask my parents

and older siblings to read me the signs and flyers we would pass along the road, curious of what

they said. I was completely intrigued, so once kindergarten came around and I began to read and

sound out simple words I remember being ecstatic. I would come home to my family and share
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the new words I had learned to read and write. I was amazed that all these years my brother had

been teasing me about what all the road signs and flyers actually said, but these days of teasing

were over as I read and sounded out all the signs we passed along the road. But in all honesty I

was truly amazed at the fact that these words actually had meaning.

With reading came writing and writing was a whole new world for a six year old like me.

Kindergarten, first grade, and second grade were the most influential times for my writing

development. I remember my kindergarten teacher at Saint Mark Catholic School repeatedly

writing the word together on the white board. As a child this word seemed so large, so my

teacher taught a classroom of about twenty kids the word by breaking it down into the three

small words: to, get, and her. Those are the three simple words that were glued into my

brain. My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Sizemore, was one of my favorite teachers to this day. Mrs.

Sizemores breakdown method did not always work and I began to struggle in classwork and

homework. School work became a burden and I no longer had the patience for writing when I

was younger. My mom realized it was too soon for this sort of giving up and took initiative in

my writing. She had me practice writing at home day in and day out. My mother at the time was

a college student, studying to earn her masters degree. She was following her dream of finishing

college because she believes so heavily in receiving a good education. She was so determined to

make me a better writer and that is exactly what she did. As my mom wrote countless papers for

her college courses, she would have me sit next to her and practice my writing. My moms work

requires her to be an expert at excel, word, and powerpoint, so she would actually create

documents and print them out for me to work on. When I was done she would get a colorful pen

and scribble out or over all my work. My mother is the most influential person in my life because

of her work, her perseverance, and dedication. But my mother was especially influential when it
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came to my writing. She was always my biggest critic in revising my work.

As the years went on I developed the impression that I knew the correct format of

writing, I knew the correct grammar, and I knew how to get As on my assignments, but I no

longer found writing exciting. Like many, I disliked writing with guidelines spelled out in a

rubric. Looking back and fourth at a rubric and not being able to just express my mind really

frustrated me. The first time I did a research paper was in fifth grade. The sound of the word

research makes me cringe to this day, but our teacher explained to my class that middle school

would be full of research papers and he wanted us to be prepared. My fifth grade teacher was

right. Middle school was full of all sorts papers, especially papers that required in text citations

and a works cited. I always felt like this hindered my writing. I began to focus more on the

citations because that was worth so much of my grade that my writing began to decline. It

seemed that all my teachers stressed in class was the correct format of the paper and drifted from

the actual content of the paper. When assigned a paper, I would sit looking at a blank paged

document for hours, procrastinating.

Two years of struggling through papers had gone by and now came the eighth grade.

Eighth grade is where things started changing. My middle school teacher was Mrs. McConnell.

Mrs. McConnell changed everything for me that year. Mrs. McConnell was my grammar and

vocabulary teacher, who took special interest in helping my writing skills. She took initiative

and required that all students purchase an additional grammar textbook. The book was Grammar

Workshop by Sadlier Oxford. It broke down everything and helped me through countless papers

in the future. My teacher worked with us day by day breaking down every sentence example in

that book. By the end of that year I was able to identify in just about any sentence; the subject,

predicate, prepositions, prepositional phrases, and the difference between adverbs and verbs. I
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was able to dissect a sentence like: The cat quickly ran under the car. The subject is "The cat

and the predicate is quickly ran under the car. The adverb quickly describes the verb ran,

which is then followed by a prepositional phrase. I was also able to build a sentence with perfect

structure. Mrs. McConnell was so confident in my writing that she would show my work to the

class for reference. My teacher was so pleased, she chose me to participate in the Academic

Olympics for the subject of english. This was a competition held at a near by high school, which

would end up being where I spent the next four years of my life. The competition grouped kids

based on the subject they were most proficient in and each student was given an exam on that

subject. In the English category I had about fifteen opponents all between the ages of thirteen

and fourteen. The exam covered basic grammar rules and reading passages with questions. I

remember being so nervous walking into the building I could feel the butterflies in my stomach,

but this was such a turning point in my writing. Being chosen gave me the confidence to know

that I actually was a good writer I and still had so much time to develop my writing in high

school.

In high school, Khan Academy became my friend. I used Khan Academy videos for

almost all my school subjects, but mainly to help me get through my english classes. I looked up

videos having to do with sentence structure and all about writing. I would watch countless videos

that went along with the lessons. My brother also became a good friend to my writing in my high

school years. My brother, who is much older, was out in his field of work already, ironically as a

writer. My brother wrote for Stars and Stripes a military news paper over seas, after being a free

lance journalist for big time news stations such as CNN, CBS, and NBC. He now landed himself

a job in New York City with the CBS news bureau as a producer. He is a world traveler, writing

and videoing mainstream news stories for a living. My brother loves to write, but I never quite
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understood how he could possibly like research writing until the day came that I became

passionate about writing.

In high school I began to write a journal and it wasnt a secret diary that I kept hidden

under my bed, it was just a place I could free my mind and open up. Free writing was something

I felt I could never do in my school papers. I would write about anything and that was what I

liked most about my journal. I began to realize that my stories were quite good. I thought about

sharing them so many times, but they were just too personal and I didnt feel comfortable. My

journal made me realize that I loved to write narratives. I can make a story seem so real and

come to life and I didnt even have to try. I remember perfectly my sophomore year of high

school, we were allowed to turn in a paper for extra credit on anything we wanted to write about.

I was so happy because this was the first time in school I was able to turn in a narrative paper,

the only problem was we had to present it. At this time I wasnt sure if I was ready to present my

writing to anyone. I finally got the nerve to turn in the assignment and it was now my turn to

present to the class and teacher. My stomach was turning, but the more I read, the more I saw

people listening, and the more confident I became. The narrative I had turned in was about two

twin princesses, the story was based off the Bible story Cane and Abel found in Genesis 4: 1-16.

After this day, I began to write more and more. Writing in high school became enjoyable. I

couldnt wait to get home and just write. It was a new hobby I never thought would intrigue me.

After all, writing finally didnt seem so dreadful. I had found a niche in writing and it

became a part of my life. Im now not shy to show my work to family and friends. They actually

really enjoy reading my work and nothing makes me happier. I also recently started to dabble in

poetry and although it is hard, I am quickly improving. Finding a piece of writing that I enjoyed

helped me appreciate all texts, especially the text of my life.