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Gabriela Prado
Professor Tyberg
English 100/1 STACC
16 September 2014
My Literature Journey
Writing, what comes up to mind when you think writing? Fun, exciting, boring,
annoying, well whatever it is that you think about it, its fine. My history with English isnt as
good as it is now. Overcoming through many obstacles, like, English being my second language,
has been something that many of my peers and others have gone through. Knowing that you
have to learn a new alphabet and new pronunciations is a shock, especially at a young age. Some
kids find it very fine and easy to overcome that but for me that was and still is one of the most
difficult struggles that I have been through in school, my worst nightmare English writing.
Many writers from novels have struggled and for others it just comes naturally for them
to write. Believe me those gifted writers make way more mistakes than you think they do.
Some writers even throw everything they have written just because they think it is wrong yes
wrong for them, not for most of us. When I was in 7th grade, I had a teacher Ms. Schooler she
was a very nice and fun English teacher who encouraged, influenced, and helped me overcome
all my reading problems. I used to think that reading was boring and it really wasnt going to
help me in any other aspect towards my education. Knowing what were my beliefs towards
reading, Ms. Schooler little by little helped me change my perspective. She would assign me
books and then ask me which ones I liked and that helped me a lot. She got to know my taste in

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books and readings and I found out what were my favorite reading genres, which are action,
suspense, drama, and dystopian. That helped me a lot believe it or not. When I told her that
reading wasnt going to help me in any other thing she made me realize that writing and reading
is something that goes very well together, some say it doesnt but what Ms. Schooler told me
was that in order for you to write you need to have imagination. Now tell me what is better than
to read a book to help you with imagine things in your mind and sets you goals to write like your
favorite author or just for your own voice? Being sent to another place as you read is the most
interesting thing you imagine yourself you feel what the author feels that is a great feeling and
the same is when you write expressing what you want to say and telling the reader what you feel
is the most amazing thing you can achieve self-expression. Not many can do it not even me but,
Its about staying motivated, a quote I found online that helps me reflect on how being
influenced in reading helped me improve my imagination a lot and helped me express what I
wanted to say in a story or a narrative. No I am not a pro writer like one of my favorite writer
Edgar Allan Poe but I try my best to express myself and state my points and most of all I am
motivated to achieve and state what I have to write about.
Staying positive is a push towards your writing skills. It gives you strength to write what
you please without caring about your mistakes. For example my mistakes were either spelling,
punctuation or stating and expressing myself, I still have that problem but when I have an idea I
shouldnt really mind the punctuation because that will just slow me down. Trying to figure out
where a comma is necessary in a run on sentence for me is a huge struggle, but I just continue
writing before I forget what I have to say or state. My mistakes can be fixed after I write what
comes in my mind; which reminds me of a quote that William Stafford, in his story A Way of
Writing, states, I am making something new, something that has not been judged before. Later

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others-and maybe I myself-will make judgments. Now, I am headlong to discover. Any

distraction may harm the creating. when writing dont worry about mistakes they can be judged
later by someone else or yourself. Worrying about things will just drift you from things. Keeping
focus with my reading was as difficult, just how Stafford states when he gave an advice on
writing, if you get distracted you will cause harm to your writing and to your peace of mind. For
me to recuperate and get back to task was really difficult staying still is really not my thing
specially focusing just on one topic and writing about it, mostly when essays were timed.
As I continued my journey through school learned that my passion for reading had been
vanished and I began to lose confidence in my writing skills. It was difficult for me but luckily I
had the greatest teachers in my 11th and 12th grade. My 11th grade teacher was Ms. Ciuperca and
my 12th grade teacher was Ms. Brill, they both had almost similar ways in teaching just that Ms.
Brill was more of an it is on your own and if you dont do it your grade goes down a grade level
and Ms. Ciuperca will explain more thoroughly and she will go step by step and then she will
leave you on your own because they both were training the students to not depend on teachers as
much because when you go to college the professor would not really pay attention to you as
much specially if it would be in a lecture hall. They both taught me again to interact with a story
or at least a poem and that little by little made me stronger with my writing and annotating. I
began to notice that writing was beginning to be my second way of expressing what I feel or
what my opinon about something is with detail to others. But there was only one problem, I felt
that writing for me was limited and by that means my worst nightmare, PUNCTUATIONS. I can
never get the hang of punctuating but when it comes to writing. Dont worry about your
spelling, punctuation, and grammar, says Natalie Goldberg in her article First Thoughts. This
quote stood out to me a lot because I struggle a lot with that and I still do up to this day but when

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I saw this I realized that worrying was just going to throw me off and that is what Goldberg is
explaining here. I would always have to ask for help with punctuations after I finished writing.
Not worrying about punctuation as much helps me a lot when focusing on writing. Yes, learning
that freewriting and annotating is a way for me to interact either with the writer of whatever I
was annotating or interacting with myself and my way of explaining things in my point of view.
It was not easy at all for me to have confidence in my writing but little by little I grew to have
confidence in it. Peter Elbow states something in his article Freewriting that I do often when I
write, I am always thinking about the awkwardness, wordiness, and general mushiness of my
natural verbal product as I try to write down words, all I think about is my diction most of the
time. The fact that I struggled a lot with my English and I still have trouble makes me worry a lot
about my diction; how my words are being processed as I write and as the reader interprets it.
With the help of my 11th grade teacher I understood that it is okay to worry but not a lot because
you will lose focus on writing and it will be difficult to focus back again.
When silencing my mind, while focusing on a writing task, was one of the most difficult
tasks ever given to me in my life? I still have a lot of trouble doing that. I tend to distract myself
very easily. My 12th grade teacher noticed that I even find the wall interesting and I just zone out
and do not think about the time Im wasting when it comes to a timed writing essay with a
prompt given. It might be crazy but it is true I find everything amusing when it comes for me to
start to focus, it has always been a hassle for me to focus on anything even in reading but that
would only happen when it came for me to read stories that I dislike or it simply just did not
catch my attention. When that happens I tend to hear little noises that distract me or I think of
things that Im going to do during the day and as that is happening Im moving on with my
reading and I apparently did not receive any information what so ever about what I read. This is

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similar to writing also when I have to write, those little noises come to my head and they bug me
and do not let me concentrate on what I need to do or what I would like to write down. Anne
Lamott author of Shitty Drafts states a similar problem, What Ive learned to do when I sit
down to work on a crummy first draft is to quiet the voices in my head. Lamott learned to quiet
down those voices and to focus on her writing. Knowing that I wasnt the only person to do that
gave me a relief to misdiagnose that I was probably going crazy.
My writing is still not as great nor is my reading, but if I try and try, I will be able to
extend my learning ability and be able to learn many more strategies in reading and writing.
Having the capacity to try to overcome one thing that is difficult to achieve gives me a lot of
encouragement toward myself because Im not giving up and that is what matters most not
giving up. These twelve years of trying my best to learn English by far have been the most
impacted strategies that have occurred in my literature journey from k-12 grade, when obtaining
a passion to read and gaining a confidence in writing, to losing it almost all and struggling to
gain it back up until this day, have made me more aware and knowledgeable to the fact that not
everybody is gifted and is able to write with great power and diction to endure and try to astonish
someone with their writing it takes time and most of all confidence in yourself.

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Works Cited
Elbow, Peter. "Freewriting." Writing without Teachers. New York: Oxford UP, 1973. N. pag.
Print.
Goldberg, Natalie. "First Thoughts Form Writing Down the Bones." (n.d.): n. pag. Web.
Lamott, Anne. Shitty First Drafts. Readings for Revolutionary Writings. Stretchaccelerated composition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2013. 229-232. Print
"Meeting College-Level Expectations." Meeting College Level Expectations. N.p., n.d. Web. 17
Sept. 2014. <https://www.scholarships.com/resources/college-prep/collegeclasses/meeting-college-level-expectations/>.
Readings for Revolutionary Writing: Stretch-accelerated Composition. Boston: Bedford/St.
Martin's Custom Pub., 2013. Print.