My History of Writing

Having been put through the traditional American education system, I have had many years to learn about myself and my writing capabilities. But even after all of that time I have had to perfect this skill, I still find it difficult to put my ideas onto paper. More than anything else, I struggle with the translation of my thoughts and ideas to the written word no matter what the topic is. Even as I am writing now, each sentence needs to be carefully thought out before I can type it down. I’m not sure why this is; after all I have survived many English classes. From all of this time spent learning how to write, I feel that I should have at least some common structure that I would begin to naturally follow; however I don’t. To me, this is quite peculiar since a pattern is the first thing I create when confronted with any problem. I solve something once, and then I follow the same thinking process to solve it again.

For what it’s worth, I can’t blame this writers’ block on anyone but myself. All the way from kindergarten to my last year in high school I have had only amazing and creative English teachers who eventually got my creative juices flowing. They all attempted to teach methods of translating ideas, which I still can’t seem to grasp. My most memorable teacher was Ms. Wince whom I had for Honors American Literature. Out of all of them, she was the easiest to write for because of the way the material was taught. I believe in her class I came the closest to having the rare feeling that writing is easy.

In this journal entry, I am only speaking about my shortcomings in writing. So much so, that you may fall under the impression that I consider myself a poor writer. But I don’t. I know I can write when I am able to get my thought process under control and all my ideas correctly on paper. For my sake, I hope that English 111 will be a class that I find easy to write for and as always I am looking forward to improving my weakness in writing.