| Personal Narrative from my high school creative writing class. |
| Writing is My Life by Allison Joslin |
| Writing. The Webster's New World Dictionary says that writing is: "n. 1. The act of a person who writes; 2. Something written, as a letter, document, imscription, etc.; 3. Written form; 4. Handwriting; 5. A book, poem, article, or other literary wrok; 6. The profession or occupation of a writer; 7. The art, practice, style, or form of literary composition; adj. 1. That writes; 2. Used in writing." To me writing is a way of surviving. It's how the world is able to stay whole. Writing is my life and I was bron for it. In the beginning of my writing passion, I had a fifth grade teacher who, in my opinion only, was nuts about creative writing, namely stories. She had us on this schedule where the class was broken into two groups. One group would write on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, while the other group would do something else, editing or something. Then the groups would switch on Tuesday and Thursday, the first doing what the second had, and the second what the first had. Now, Ms. Leaderman, my fifth grade teacher, didn't set up this schedule and just say, "Get going. Write!" No, she taught us the process of writing a story with bright yellow packet. I still have that packet and whenever my brain fogs up I pull it out and say, "You know you've written silly, stupid, nonsense in the past, just put something on the paper. You can fix it up later." Well after having Ms. Leaderman ingrain the writing process in my brain, I moved into sixth grade. Mrs. Deporter. Wow, does that name bring up a lot of memories. Unfortunately none of them has to do with writing. Besides a really bad itch I have to create a character who is just like her, a teacher that always manages to get lipstick on her teeth. She'd check for it, clean it up, and reapply her lipstick. And of course, while doing this she explains to her class, "I have this constant problem with my lipstick getting on my teeth constantly." Moving on, after that wonderful year with Mrs. Deporter I went onto Mr. Falconer's Language Arts and Social Studies class for seventh grade. I've always loved bird of prey and Mr. Falconer is my favorite bird of prey. Mr. Falconer was a poetry fanatic, who really got my writing going. He was the teacher who first told me, "Just turn the story in as it is so that I can grade it. I'll give it back and then you can keep working on it." I still have that story at this time. It is a short novella of forty-two pages. What's really intriguing about this novella is that it started out as a short story based on a picture from a magazine for a class assignment. Another thing that happened during my time with Mr. Falconer was that I learned how to organize a.k.a. prepare for writing a story. Instead of just creating a plot and some character names, I learned how to create character profiles. Once I had the hang of character profiles, I was able to take my friends and place them in my stories. Falconer helped me understand that the story isn't just about what happens, it's about the feelings, looks, background history, etc. of the characters. Withouth all that you have nothing special. Now for the way of wording my stories, well that started with a brain beating in eighth grade and not just from my English teacher. Ms. Vanderwood, my Language Arts Teacher, and Mr. Starosky, my U.S. History Teacher, in eighth grade did a lot of enforcing on prepositions and grammar correctness. All my history papers were of the technical version, and my English papers were a toss-up between creativity and seriousness. Mrs. Vanderwood taught me the technique of taking simple words with the same meaning and using this one over that one because it sounded or flowed better or just so that I wasn't repeating the same word over and over agian. My saying about the word "said," which I follow because of her teaching is, "Spice it up a little without using the word said." Together Mrs. Vanderwood and Mr. Starosky taught me that there are three ways to write: (1) seriously; (2) creatively; (3) dully. Meanwhile, with all this happening I was busy using my own time to continue experimenting with my story writing process. I was constantly looking things up and studying different ways to do this and that. The two main things I got into were (1) whether I should outline my story first or just to go with the flow of an idea; (2) I wondered what would happen if I took this friend's personality and combined it with this ones. Or if you chop off her head and put that girl's head on the headless body, but not those eys, take them out and give her...say what about her family life. Well I had lots of fun redoing the mistakes in some of my stories, but sometimes I just threw my hands up and said, "Screw it! I'm down with this." Of course, by the next day I'd be back at it. I love creating or recreating things in my stories. At time I just want to aone everything out and write. Never happens, and when it does I always have someone saying, "Okay let's do this Allie." My life is my writing and my writing is my life. People should be careful around me sometimes. My brain will pick up certain things, store them, and use them at a later date in time. I have lots of friends who give me great ideas or swat me on the head as the exclaim, "Allie!" I guess I'm an exasperating person with a tendency to forget things while I sit, stand, lie, run, and daydream on paper. I lvoe writing, but most of all I love all the people who inspire me, everyone does. There's no boundary in what will make me stop, pull out paper and start writing. And I owe that to all my fabulous teachers. |
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