Reflective Letter (newest version) Edit please

"I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within." This quote by Gustave Flaubert is one that I find to be incredibly true when it comes to my own writing. This state of knowing what I want to say, but can’t actually get it to come out is the main problem I have always had when it comes to writing. Through my writing 101 course and writing my first and second essays I feel like I was finally able to adapt to this flaw and truly improve my writing process and writing abilities.

My first essay was on Bacon’s Rebellion. Since this was my first essay I found myself doing just about everything wrong. One problem I found with my first essay was my ability to write a good thesis. Since the beginning of this quarter the word thesis was a word that I never heard before. I thought I understood how to write one, but after getting my first essay back I found I didn’t. I really didn’t understand what I was doing wrong until I started to ask my classmates how I could improve. Then through the help I received, I attempted writing my thesis’s in a new way. I began to include the factors that are needed in a high level thesis, and now I believe that the thesis’s I write are considered higher quality. The second problem I found with writing this essay was how to incorporate my personal voice. When I first wrote this essay It was mainly just facts after facts with a little bit of what I thought near the bottom. After I received feedback however I started to try and change this in my writing. Through help from my teacher and classmates I started adapting my personal voice to all of my work and I feel that now it is present in all of my work giving it originality.

My second essay was one that was much more creative. This essay was a group project on Loyalist vs. Patriots. This essay was very unique however; we were able to write it in pretty much any format that we wished. My partner and I decided to do a conversation between a Loyalist and a Patriot. While writing this essay I found that by being able to let out a more creative side I was able to write something that not only was better work but also something that was easier to read. One problem I found while writing this essay however was that I did not like writing assignments in groups. I found that for me having two different voices in a paper is something really hard to do. It was also a lot harder to be responsible for both myself and my partner. I realized however that this type of group work is something that is going to come up more and more in future work, so I started to try and make the best of it. I feel that this first group experience caused me to be ready for the next group writing assignment we had, in which after some time we were able to produce higher quality work.

One factor that I found was present in doing all of my essays was that I am a huge procrastinator. For my first two essays I was procrastinating so much that I didn’t even start writing my essays until a couple hours before it was due. This is one of the major factors I found that hindered my writing. Once I recognized this fact however, I started to try my hardest to stop it. Now so close away from the end of the quarter, I have started to look back at all the work I have done. I can now truly see how much I have stopped my procrastinating habits, since the beginning of this quarter. This has been shown through all of my latter essays and my revised ones. I feel that I was finally able to kick this habit and now with getting things done sooner I am able to edit a lot more and have a lot more drafts. This is something that I feel has truly made life easier when it come to my writing and hopefully is shown the quality of my work.

For a lot of people writing come naturally to them. For me however writing is something that I have to keep working on continuously. If I don’t I find that everything I write is terrible and not worth anything. Through this writing 101 course however I feel I learned many skills that overall have improved not only the way I write but the way I think about writing as well. I now feel that my overall writing skill has improved and also my ability to write what I truly think is better. Through these revised essays it is very easy to see the improvements I have made with my writing. I still am not a perfect writer though, but hopefully though continuing to try and improve myself I one day will be considered a truly good writer.