Tashmia LaGuerre

Dr. Tara Roeder

FYW 1000C

30 April 2019

Where My Pen Has Taken Me

During this semester, I was exposed to many different realms of writing that I had often

overlooked as writing pieces in the past. To me, it seems more common that people think of

essays, papers, and books when it comes to writing; but this course has opened my eyes to just

more than a paper you have to write for a class. We’ve looked over manifestos, spoken word

poetry, memoirs, and even something as little as a rant. As a writer, I have definitely improved in

my creativity, style, and development in my work and my portfolio is a way to display my best

effort in all my recent writing.

I made sure to choose my pieces that I felt the most confident in when I completed them.

All the work that I included were pieces that would leave the best impression of me as a writer.

There is no common theme that I was going for throughout the semester when I did my writing,

just because I wanted to have a different experience with each project I completed. I worked on

projects that were sensitive and deep to me, culturally close to my heart, and mostly creatively.

With all my projects, I made sure to put out my best effort by reading over my drafts

before I considered it finished. There are certain criteria that I focused on with all my work. I

checked for grammar, creativity, relevance, and development. In addition, there are times where I

myself cannot point out my mistakes in my own writing, which is why it is a lot of times better
to get feedback and advice from other writers. The in-class workshops that we had for each

project definitely improved the quality of all my pieces from this semester. By hearing ideas

from multiple people, I was able to get more ideas and corrections for my work and was also

able to help other people. I learned different techniques, and was able to use what I learned to

help my peers as well. During my own time, my most efficient way of revising my work was to

read my work aloud to make sure it flowed correctly. I noticed that sometimes when I just read

my work in my head, I may skim over it and not realized that I was missing important parts of

my work. Another technique that I occasionally used for revising was to read my writing pieces

backwards, sentence by sentence. I was taught this technique in high school and found it helpful

ever since to help look specifically at every sentence to check if it was grammatically correct.

With all these revising techniques I have used, I had corrected many more mistakes than if I had

just handed my projects in the way they were.

My audience for all of my writing pieces were for the most part geared towards anybody,

and there was not really anybody specific I was writing for. I made my writing pieces in a way

that would interest almost anybody, except for possibly my narrative. My narrative was more

personal and I was mostly reaching out for people who may have had a similar experience than

me or have difficulty putting themselves first. The narrative was probably my favorite piece that

I did this semester because of how passionate I was about writing it. I took my time to write

exactly how I felt about the topic of self love, and wanted my audience to get to know me better.

Similar to this letter, I wrote the paper as if I were having a conversation aloud with somebody so

that it could be as genuine as possible. It also allowed me to let out any feelings I had inside and

express how I feel about something important to me. For my other projects, such as the website
and the poems, I chose topics that would interest anybody. With my French cuisine website, I

included different kinds of French food for people who may not know what we eat, and even

included recipes for anybody who likes to cook and try new things. There are also the foodies

who would rather go out to new restaurants, which is why I included some of the best restaurants

in New York City. For my poetry, I created a collection of poems with all different topics and

meanings behind them for different people’s taste. Some people may enjoy uplifting and happy

poems, while others may like deeper and more personal poems. My main goal for most of my

work this semester was to bring something to the table for every kind of person.

I enjoyed all the genres of writing that I explored in this course, whether it was a genre I

was already familiar with or not. Specifically, I enjoyed the genres I already knew about because

there was even more branches to those genres that I had never known beforehand. For example, I

never knew that a common form of poetry was spoken word. I was most interested in it because

it gives a poem a whole new meaning when it comes out of the paper into real life. When you

can hear and see a poem rather than just reading it in your head, it gives you a whole new view

of poetry and how powerful it can be. Discovering spoken word poetry was the main reason I

decided to chose poetry as my genre for our latest project because it opened up new ideas for my

style of poetry. Just by listening to the words taught me different ways of expression in poetry.

As a writer, I learned that I have more potential to create amazing pieces of writing, and

that I am not only limited to writing essays for a class. The world of writing was a lot bigger than

I had ever known before I took this writing course. I have developed new skills that I will carry

with me in my future pieces and I am only open to learning how to be a better writer each day.

Through all the Blackboard readings and exercises done in class, I had found so many ways to
express myself that makes my own writing more unique. A skill that I believed helped me the

most throughout the semester was “show, don’t tell”. It encouraged me to be more descriptive

with my characters or setting and allowed the readers to get a better imagination of the piece,

rather than blatantly stating the plot.

To sum it up, the most influential lesson I learned this semester is that there are no limits

when it comes to writing. Sometimes, writing does not even have to be in writing. It can be

spoken, acted out or illustrated; and it does not end at an essay. Writing has allowed me to

express myself in a different way than I ever did before, and allow myself to get the help I need

to do better.