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Javier Negrete Jr Professor Emilia Fuentes Writing and Inquiry October 16, 2013 The Balance in My Voice There is so much to be thankful for in life. One of those things is the opportunity of living in a nation where individuality is of substantial value. The ability to think and act as an individual and to unleash a full expression of them in an exchange of discourse is among the most powerful things one can have in their role as Americans. Its my literacy as power and a weapon against the greedy and powerful. My daily writings have grown and developed greater and greater each day. Each in-class writing and essay has taught me something new about my expression processes and my identity. My experience in my in-class writings can only be described as a childs reaction to when he does somethings he is not supposed to and receives no form of punishment or look of discernment. With my in-class writings, I have stepped into a forbidden world of expression that in a stiff academic paper would be considered a no no. Most importantly, my in-class writings have taught me to discourse in matters of nonacademic papers without fear or mercy. For example, the Im lovin it topic was a topic of rhetorical analysis in which I chose to unleash all the despise I hold towards McDonalds food. I described in the common language of my generation about how fake the food tastes and how low quality their food smells. I learned to unleash emotions and to take risks in voicing my own opinion. For example, I even described how I disgusted I felt upon seeing or smelling that food. The concept of stepping out of the comfort zone

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and into a merciless zone was so important in the development of my voice. It taught me to never be modest and to reach passion to convey a message to an audience. To feel a passion, I first had to meditate and analyze everything I needed to say and to make sure sound of my soul was not lost in emotion. This is something I learned upon writing my memoir. Meditation and reflection were crucial in transferring the sound of my soul to paper and to capture my personality in words. In my memoir I needed to tell my audience how my life had events in my life that promoted my literary self. The difficult thing to do was to break the constraint that my life is not as exciting or memorable as it could be portrayed on television. I wanted my audience to capture that literacy events do not always come as dramatic as they are portrayed on television. I went deep into thought and spent days reflecting and pondering on events. I stayed mentally quiet as Anne Lammot described in Shitty First Drafts to prevent a critical voice from judging my thinking process. To make a beautiful memoir, I let my meditated words, flow into the essay as smoothly as I could let them flow. These pieces gave the most impact because they were two ends of extremes of writing. On one hand, I was brutal, merciless, and fearless of what I wanted to say. On the other, I was careful, flowing, and serene. I needed to know two extremes in order to find a balance of the two. I needed to understand what it really meant to be expressive, honest, careful, and passionate in order to be consistent with who I am in life and paper. More importantly, these two pieces were the writings that helped me to find a way to discourse to an audience who is at ease at finding the whole identity of the author.

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