I never liked grading myself. Probably not the first person to have said that but its not because I’m afraid to say I’m bad at writing. Its because I don’t like to say that I don’t think I’m bad at all. Matter of fact I think (personally) I am a fairly good writer. When I get interested in a subject to write about it becomes very easy to write. I will just start writing and eventually words and sentences will start to form as I think them. Its very “on-the-spot” but its the way I do it. But there is obviously things I need to get better at. I should try to expand my vocabulary better to better my sentence strength and bring more of an either intellectual or emotional aspect to my writing. Organization wise I think that I have either mastered or nearly mastered how to organize my paragraphs to effectively put my point across in an essay. To grade myself out of 100 (where 100 is master and 0 is novice with no experience) I believe I am in the range between 70-80. This says I know what I am doing well enough to be confident writing a paper but still have room to improve and expand.
Writers Memo
To My Peers
From Mike Conry
10/2/17
Evolution of Narrative
Why did I write my essay about this memory? Because my relationship with writing has been a war. I either wanted to write a lot (when I had freedom and creativity) and had fun doing it. Or I hated writing because I wasn’t interested in the topic or just wanted nothing to do with it. Usually it was the latter because English class was never my strong suit. But when I had an essay assignment when I could use imagination and freedom to create a short story or some kind of creativity aspect I enjoyed writing. The reason I chose this memory was because I didn’t like to write until this assignment i got. It showed me that you could have a balance between structure and freedom of a creative and imaginative mindset. This assignment I wrote about made me like to write again. Although I do enjoy how it is so far it needs work. I should use stronger word choice to describe things and I need to make it longer. I should put in more detail but not stress about it so much that I lie about certain things that happen. It has to all be true otherwise the reason I chose this topic to write about would have been for nothing.
“Attending” to King and Alexie
Steven King is one of the most successful writers in the world both at the time he was publishing books and now. But he didn’t always start as a writer. He was first introduced to writing after a guidance counselor at his school wanted to get him to use his “restless pen in a more productive way.” His counselor found him a writer for a newspaper who taught him how to write a story. He taught him to write the story for yourself that you would like. Similar to a rough draft but then he taught him to go back and take out all the parts that aren’t the story similar to a final draft. I believe this to have been King’s first real writing experience, but it does not compare to Alexie’s upbringing.
Alexie must be the youngest starting writing prodigy I have read about. He taught himself how to read a little over the age of 3 by reading Superman Comics. He connected the pictures to how the words looked and taught himself to read by connecting the dots. His motivation was his father, he loved his father and his father loved to read so Alexie learned to love to read aswell. Growing up in an Indian Reservation was hard for him. He talked about how it was dangerous for a young Indian to learn at the pace he was and they he was lucky to have been able to and that he did. His motivation changed from his father’s approval to wanting to help more Indian children. They grew up reading in school but not like Alexie. He wanted to share his knowledge with them in hopes they could teach themselves more. He wanted them to unlock their own doors in order to have a better future. His upbringing compared to King’s is like no other, in this way King does not compare to Alexie.
Annotating Gee
This is one of my annotated pages in Gee’s “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction”. I annotated a couple of sentences talking about how a Discourse is a kind of “identity kit”. I think this is true in some aspects. You are your own person. You probably know how to do things that most people don’t and you can offer the world something new. But the things you learn throughout your life, maybe a sport, skill, instrument, job, etc. is a Discourse. What isn’t a Discourse is your view of life such as morals, imagination and other ideas that you and only you think of. So a Discourse isn’t an identity kit, its more of a skill kit. It doesn’t define who you are it just is something to help you make someone out of yourself.
