Portrait of a Writer

Writing has not always come very easily for me; in grade school the longest and most comprehensive writing assignment I was ever tasked with was a one and half page book report on “Lord of the Rings; The Two Towers”. In grade school we were taught about the importance of writing and we were shown several examples of skilled writing. Although, I was no stranger to talented writes for as a child I read numerous books from varying genres, so I knew what “good” writing looked like. However, these techniques were never put into practice. Most of the writing I did growing up was poorly graded and focused primarily on grammar. Even with this being the primary focus for so many years, I didn’t even begin to understand it until my senior year in high school.

All of the “skills” I have attained in writing came from my professor and mentor, Bradley Dyke, who taught me how to write a research paper and held the grading criteria so strict that less that forty percent of people can pass his class and several that do are not doing so with honor roll grades. In his “Politics of Terrorism” class, I was required to write a ten page paper on counter terrorism foreign policy. This was an incredibly difficult assignment which took several weeks to complete, but it was at the time I realized these are the sort of papers I prefer to write. Papers that require research allow me to construct as much information as I am will to search for; whereas my least favorite writing assignments (by far) are these self-evaluation writings that force me to sit down and try to force out a certain length of writing, when (like in this case), I feel as though the is no way I will not fall short of the minimum page length requirements.

When it comes to the preparation of my papers, I prefer to utilize the outline rubric; this helps me to point me in a general direction and organize all my information in a coherent pattern. This method works best for me on research papers and even analysis and summaries in which there is a body of text for me to dissect; whereas, free writing assignments I find much more difficult to organize beforehand. Typically after I have an outline, I begin writing and I continue just writing using all that I can off the top of my head. I then critique my work, reconstruct my outline, and search for variables which after review are apparently missing. My original outline and the final draft of my paper can be very different. In the case of lengthy assignment, the differences are like night and day.

The majority of the writing that I do and have done is academic; more specifically, in the fields of religion and political science. I feel more comfortable writing about religion and politics than I do writing fiction. This may mean that I lack imagination or the creativity necessary for quality fiction writing, or maybe it is because since I have learned to write, I have not tried my hand at it. Therefore, I consider myself a decent writer. I still have much to learn and refine, and as much as I despised this assignment (and all assignments like it), I found it useful to take the time reflecting on my writing style and feel as though it will only help me improve.