Reflective Letter As a writer, I am a painter.

Because I tend to have a creative process when I write, my pieces always reflect the same process that I take to make a piece of art. My words unfold like paint on a canvas. I start with a small idea that slowly builds over time, revealing the final product after much work. My writing tends to be an overabundance of description and follows creativity more than logic. As I write, I tend to base my evidence on emotional appeal, as an artist would. My pieces always have a splash of my personality in them, showing little details, sometimes random thoughts, and lots of energy. Over the last semester, I have learned about the style in which I enjoy writing, my strengths and weaknesses of my writing, and the processes I take to complete a piece. Firstly, I have found that I enjoy writing descriptive pieces more than anything else. Following a creative process is the first step in success as an artist. Every piece I write, and painting I paint, should reflect uniqueness, a sense of purpose, and variety. To reflect uniqueness, I try to write with a different tone depending on the type of piece I am writing. If it is academic, such as a research paper, I try to use a stronger vocabulary, whereas if the piece were casual, such as journal, I would write as if I was speaking. Next to this, each paper I write is unique in its purpose. For example, my personal narrative has the purpose of showing the audience my failures and successes as a writer from past to present. Oppositely, my group proposal has the purpose of persuading an audience to take on a huge construction project. Each piece has its own voice as if it were speaking for itself, but without variety, the pieces would seem dull. In my opinion, writing is just another way to express oneself. If a piece lacks variety in its structure, sentences, and vocabulary, it will seem uninteresting. Therefore,

as I have learned over the past semester, variety in structure is necessary to complete a great piece of work. I, in this endeavor, have tried to maintain variety in my pieces. For example, in my book review, I integrate quotes and my own voice to give the piece a sense of diversity. In my review, I wrote, In referencing the Classical style of architecture, for example, de Botton explores the theory that columns, in the time of Greko Roman architecture, reflect beauty. Columns were a universal form of appeal in the world during that time, it wasnt thought so hard to know how to build beautifully (30). Unfortunately, de Botton claims that in modern architecture there is no universal standard of beauty. In these few sentences, I not only show de Bottons opinion, but I give evidence to it through a quote, give my own research and thoughts, and also have variety in my sentence structure. My sentences start, in order, with a preposition, noun, and then an adverb. Giving variety in the structure of a piece achieves the goal of fascination in the reader. Next to creating descriptive pieces, I have also found that I enjoy writing to reveal my voice to myself. In the beginning of the semester, I entered English with the intention of copying every style I had ever learned in writing previous to this class. I had the belief that I had to follow every rule of writing, and pay attention more to my diction than my thought process, but as I developed in my writing, I discovered that the meaning behind an idea is the focal point of the piece rather than the grammar. Because I have had to search for a purpose in writing, I have also had to uncover my own voice. Throughout this process, my voice has also revealed my strengths and weaknesses of my writing.

My strengths in writing include variety in sentence structure, as I have stated above, my integration of quotes and citations, and according to my peers, the flow that my papers take on. My weaknesses include a lack of vocabulary, a weak sense of audience, poor revisions, and problems with punctuation. Beginning with my strengths, even in my small writings, I tend to include quotes to give evidence to my opinion. In my Berkenkotter and Murray blog, I wrote, Likewise, I felt that [Berkenkotters] findings were self-explanatory. For example, she said, writing is the skill might be defined as the ability to respond to [situational variables] (221). I could even tell you that writing at home with unlimited time and an abundance of resources (a relaxed setting with books and my imagination) is going to produce a different outcome than writing with a time limit and on a subject in which I feel uncomfortable in a tight humid classroom. Next to quote integration is my strong sense of flow that my papers have. I, for one, have a hard time seeing this, but according to my art history professor and peers, conveying my ideas in a consistent way is one of my fortes. As for my weaknesses, they highly outweigh my strengths (yikes!). My first and most troubling weakness is my lack of vocabulary. Most of my sentences sound the same, as do my words. Thankfully, I have an automatic thesaurus on my computer! Next to this, I have trouble finding the audience to which I write. For example, in my letter to my teacher, the second draft of my personal narrative, my feedback had comments such as is your audience still your teacher?, and if you take this to a final draft, may want to find a better audience. In the same piece, one comment said, you are a bit comma happy, perceptibly showing my problems with punctuation as well. Lastly, in most

occasions, I leave ninety percent of a piece the same when I revise it. Sometimes this is because I am inherently lazy, and sometimes I feel that my thoughts are better conveyed as they are than how they are revised. For example, in my personal narrative piece, I just copied almost the same exact sentence, without changing it to enhance it. My first draft reads, Although the narrative is perhaps unclear to some, this poem was praised for its simplicity and use of metaphors. Many teachers loved that my strong voice showed through this poem, and has always been an example of what I both enjoy and am good at in writing, and my second draft reads, Although the narrative is perhaps unclear to some, this poem was praised for its simplicity and use of metaphors. Many teachers who read this piece, hopefully including yourself, enjoyed my strong voice and use of expressionism. This example shows the lack of improvement when I revise. Yes, I did change the sentence structure, but not the overall idea, nor did I strengthen my vocabulary. Overall, I have found through this class that my weaknesses in writing outweigh my strengths, but no one piece is perfect; slow improvement is just a part of the writing process. Over the past semester, I have changed my major twice. Not only have I not been able to choose a major that fits my passions, but I have also had a hard time writing in different disciplines. At the beginning of the semester, I was an Architectural Technology and Design major. At the beginning of my writing process in that major, I found it difficult to find a voice simply because architects do not write often. The people that had the same major also found it difficult to write, especially when combining sustainability with architecture. As the semester progressed, I became an undecided major, and ventured through school for a few weeks trying to find my voice again. But what I also

found was that changing writing styles to fit another discipline is much harder. Overall, I cannot completely say that I learned much about writing in my discipline because I do not technically have one, but I have learned that when trying to decide on a major, writing plays a huge role, and can help me decide which majors I like to and dont like to write in. In the future, I hope to continue my endeavors as a writer in another discipline, or multiple disciplines, depending on what my heart decides. One thing I hope that I do not have to ever do again is collaborative writing. I, for one, love working with people, but find that collaborative writing is hurtful to my career when members of my group fail to hold their weight. The members in my group this past semester were very nice and hard working, but as a perfectionist, I would rather work alone. Perhaps it was because my major was also their major, and we all had a hard time writing in our major, or perhaps it was because I took on a leadership role where my partners were unable to handle having equal roles. Either way, it was a wearisome experience for me. Technology has affected my writing abilities in many ways. Firstly, I use a computer to do ninety five percent of all of my writing. The Internet allows me to find sources easily, and information at the click of a button. Unlike most people, though, I like to outline my papers on plain paper by hand first, and then translate them into the computer. Sometimes I will even write by hand and then copy onto the computer. Thankfully, the computer also has many resources that I can use to improve a paper. These include automatic capitalization, autocorrect, free dictionary and thesaurus, and automatic fixing of sentence structure. I use technology every day to write, and am thankful that it is in my reach to use.

The pieces in my portfolio reflect my writing voice by their complexity and growth. In my personal narrative, I venture to find how I have developed in writing, analyzing my writing in the past. This was the first step in finding what in my writing needed to be fixed and what needed improvement. The next step was showing my opinion on a book, which for me was difficult because I am not a huge fan of reading. Due to this process, I had to teach myself to discipline my mind in something that I do not enjoy, and it reflects how little I have written about books. This exposes part my writing self in that I do not write often about books. Next was the proposal, which collaboratively, my group executed. Although not easy, and very choppy in my opinion, the piece reflects my writing abilities in my adequate research and explanation of my opinion. The group project also shows that I like being a leader in a group, and that I am also a perfectionist. Lastly, my hypertext essay moves away from any writing I have ever done. It reflects my voice in writing by showing what I am truly concerned about and likewise what I enjoy writing about. I have researched much information on child obesity, and find that it hits my heart pretty hard. Therefore, the piece reflects my tone and somberness on the subject. Overall, I have found that these pieces suggest all weaknesses, strengths, likes and dislikes that I have in the writing world. Throughout the semester, each piece that I have written has taught me something new about the writing world. For example, through my personal narrative, the goal was to find out what my writing has been like in the past, and what all has contributed to my writing voice. In writing this piece, I found that finding my place in the writing world has been hard, but I have always wanted to write well, and will continue to grow in my writing. With the rhetorical analysis, the objective was to read a book in my own

discipline and dissect its pieces as best I could. I found this very hard to do, but loved being able to read something interesting rather than a textbook. Alongside finding something I was interested in, the group proposal helped me work with others, although I did not find it to be easy either. The process was difficult to get through, but it taught me that group projects take patience and hard work to accomplish a goal completely -this goes for the group video as well. Splitting up work is harder than I imagined, but I found that it is doable. The activity also told me that I do not work well with a group, or at least my group. Lastly, my hypertext essay ultimately made me look at writing differently. Firstly, it made me find valid sources, teaching me that I cannot look directly for just decent ones, and that most of the information on the Internet is not true. It also made me write in a different setting, expressing my opinion with direct research behind it rather than quotes. This was hard for me to accomplish considering I love integrating quotes in my papers. In my opinion, each piece was a success in teaching me something new even if I did not enjoy it. Over the past semester in English, I have found that not only am I a painter as a writer, but I am also an activist. My goal in writing has completely changed due to this class, and has gone from wanting to entertain the audience, as an artist does, to wanting to make a difference through my writing as an activist. Each piece that I have written reflects my personality in many ways, showing fervor and variety, but each piece also shows how much my writing has matured over the past few months. My writing experience this past semester is best expressed through one of my favorite quotes by Robert Frost, No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader. The only question remaining is: did I affect my readers the way

my writing this semester affected me?