Portrait of a Writer

When I was younger, around seven or eight, I loved to write stories. I was convinced I
was going to write a series of books about a quirky, lovable detective and all his ridiculous
escapades at the detective agency. Eventually, I abandoned this mission to be in a band with my
best friend, Katie. We were going to be famous someday. We kept at it for an embarrassingly
long time, writing and performing songs for ourselves and our families. Eventually, we grew out
of that to start our own online newspaper. Katie and I were the most dramatic kids you could
ever meet. Katie went on to study theater and I dance, and we both loved it. I think that writing is
not much different from theater or dance. The arts all have a shared goal of conveying a
message. That is all writing is.
Writing is an underappreciated treasure. It is a necessity in life that many people forget
about but everyone uses. It does not only involve academics, but is seen in daily communication.
It is impossible to "not like" writing because it is everywhere. While writing a formal paper may
not be enjoyable to some, I have always liked it because it is very similar to the arts. Things like
theater, visual art, dance, and music have always come naturally for me. Writing is no different.
College writing is dramatically different from high school, and with the freedom to write in my
own unique voice it has opened the doors for me to love academic writing as well as personal.
Once I got to high school, I forgot my adolescent dreams of fame and was forced
to crank out identical essays and abandon my creativity. I was taught a very different definition
of writing from what I had been using in my childhood pieces. "Good" writing had a clear thesis
statement and purpose that was basically a direct quote from the teacher's lesson plan. Looking
back, I realize how restricted and stuffy I sounded while writing just last year. This is an example
of one of the essays I wrote to send in with my college applications. It has all of the basic

principles my high school English teachers taught me were important: a hook, personal anecdote,
and clear thesis statement.
I believe that when faced with a challenge in life one can choose to respond to it in one of two ways:
positively or negatively. Through reexamination of my own life I have realized that controlling
one's own environment is impossible but one can choose how to approach any given challenge. This
is a lesson I learned my freshman year of high school when I was presented with a choice to remain
in the environment I had known all my life or to venture out into the unknown. My experience of
moving to North Carolina marked my transition from childhood to adulthood and illustrates my
personal evolution in approaching challenges because it taught me how to be the positive, open, and
determined person I am today.

What this lacks is my own, personal voice. It describes a situation in my life, but does not
use the language I would use now. However, to my teachers and even parents who edited my
paper, it was superb.
I had a varying array of English teachers, but the result in each class was the same. I went
in, did my assignments, then I left with an A and hardly anything in my head. Each teacher
drilled the same grammar techniques into me, which I was sure to forget the following summer,
and pushed their rehearsed interpretations of Shakespeare and Hemingway down my throat. I
was never allowed to interpret the writing myself, and I was never taught why we were learning
about them or how reading their work would make me a better writer. I simply took in the
information and spat it back out on the test without truly learning anything.
Many of my peers have shared this same feeling toward their high school English classes.
My guess is that this is because most of us went to a public high school and were forced to take
the same English class with the same course objectives with teachers that sat in conferences that
told them the same way to teach. The key in high school in uniformity. Everyone gets the same
education. While this is fine for some classes, writing is completely different. It was not until my
first college writing class (this class?) that I realized how truly unique writing is to each and

every person. Writing cannot be taught in a lecture hall or even a class of thirty high schoolers.
Writing requires a personal level of attention because no two writers are alike.
The only class that I feel truly taught me anything about writing was AP English and
Language Composition. Since this was an AP class and my school was very competitive, I was
motivated to put my best efforts into the assignments. I felt like the underdog all year, but by the
end of the semester, I saw huge improvements in my writing and I felt prepared to go on to my
first year college writing class. It was during this time that I feel like my strengths as a writer
really developed. An example of this can be found in an essay I wrote during this class about
how globalization is causing cultures to disappear:
Although globalization is said to be beneficial to the world by connecting groups of people, the truth
is that it causes the definitions between beautiful and cherished cultures to blur. This is devastating
to the world because it causes cultures to disappear and evolve into different, new cultures.

This excerpt exemplifies how I learned to use a professional tone, increased the
complexity of my vocabulary and sentence structure, and memorized tips for writing engaging
theses and clincher sentences. Most importantly, I learned the importance of a unique voice in
writing. I showed this further on in this essay by incorporating an example of how my own
grandparents' South African and Spanish culture eventually blended in with the American
mainstream.
In this class, I was forced to make my writing stand out against all the other more
qualified students in my class. My constant determination to prove myself against my peers
resulted in obvious progress in my writing. It was this year that I learned how to balance the
technical grammatical side of writing with the artistic component that would make it my own. It
is this equilibrium between technique and creativity that is true in all the art forms, especially
dance. While a foundation in ballet is imperative, dance would be nothing without the inventive

choreography and risk-taking choreographers like Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey. The
same is true for writing because while a background in grammar and the writing process is
important, writing would not be significant without fresh ideas and a special voice to present
them.
Creativity has never been a problem for me. I have always been involved in all things
dramatic, in fact, my nickname when I was younger was "Drama Queen." Through my
experiences with dance, I have discovered that everything has meaning and the expression of that
is what brings people together. I have never danced a piece that had no significance. My greatest
performances have not been those that I did the best technically, but those that evoked an
emotion in my audience. The dances that made my grandparents smile and my mother cry are the
dances I will always remember. The same goes for writing. What is the point of writing if it is
not to make your audience feel connected to your message?
Writing is also often a reflection of an impact someone had on the author's life. My dad
has always been my best friend, my role model, and my rock. In 2009 I wrote a poem about him
for Father's Day using a metaphor of the bell tower at Purdue University, his Alma Mater and
home. Unknowingly, I was creating a perfect example of how a personal connection can improve
a piece of writing.
He's a tower of strength
His edges may be rough,
But figure out what makes
him tick
And the rest is lost to time
A tower of strength, that's
what he is
He never wavers
Always steady
Like a clock, tick tick

But look deep inside that

tower
Beneath the layers of brick is
gold
Coating the walls of this
structure
That tower may be
intimidating
With his sharp corners and

steeple
He has a strict scheme of
brown and gray
And nothing passes his doors
that he doesn't like can't
handle
That tower can take the heat
And embrace the cold
It's never going to
It's gold

I have found that even professional writing can have emotion. Some of the greatest
writing of all time was written entirely to express an emotion and evoke a response in the
listener. Shakespeare's sonnets, speeches by influential people in history like Martin Luther King
Jr. or Winston Churchill, and even ancient prophets from the Bible all send a significant
message. This is the writing that has the most profound impact on society and this is the writing
that students should be learning to imitate. Some of the biggest things to happen in history were
because of pen on paper: the I Have a Dream speech, the Declaration of Independence, and even
the many powerful speeches by Adolf Hitler. Writing can have a real impact on people's lives.
Even pieces like the essay we read by Alfie Kohn conveyed a passion for an idea that he
convinced his readers of through his use of language. This is what I strive to do in my own
writing: make a connection with the reader. Make them feel something. This was my
unintentional result in writing the poem about my dad when I was thirteen: my reader would be
able to feel what I felt and relate to my view of my dad. While professional writing may seem
very different from personal writing, the result is always the same: to plant an idea in the reader's
mind.
I have never found writing particularly difficult, especially when writing about something
I cared about. For example, when writing about something such as dance, something I am truly
in love with, I always find it easy to end up with an outcome I am proud of. This is an example
of a poem I wrote about dance in 2011.
Dance
The rhythm of my soul
Stretching the norm
Until unnatural
Passion beating in my heart
To the bass in my head
A million little men
Crank my muscles til they burn

Moving my mind
To create the unimagined
My feet make the music
Fluttering like wings on a microphone
Landing quietly
Ill tiptoe across the wire
To the encore

Ideas have always come easily to me and writing them down has been like second nature.
Oftentimes, I barely know I'm thinking or making progress. Once I break concentration to look
back at what I've written, I'm always surprised to see the amount I've accomplished. Even if it is
writing solely for academic purposes, I have never found it hard to simply put words on a paper.
In high school, I found it hard to only write a few sentences for a warm-up; I always ended up
filling most of the page. In school, when I was forced to write about something the teacher
requested, I could always make it a little more bearable by relating it back to myself. For
example, in my eighth grade English class we had to write a poem about one of our vocabulary
words. I chose "turncoat" and wrote about a friend who had recently hurt me. As long as I could
find a way to relate the assignment back to myself it was not hard to put my ideas into sentences.
While the ideas flowed easily, they were not always the most accurate or well-written.
For example, if I had to do a timed essay, it was sure to be a mess of ideas thrown together with a
lot of erasing and crossing out. The information was there, but I found it hard to organize without
time to prepare. If I was forced to write a full essay the first time I saw the prompt I would often
sit there unmoving for a few minutes. Maybe I would start it this way... But maybe I should
include this somewhere... The paragraphs would overlap and I would repeat myself many times.
If anything stresses me out about writing it's a time limit. I enjoy writing pieces with meaning,
and if I am pressured to finish in a certain number of minutes I will never be able to convey the
message I wish as deeply as I could with an indefinite amount of time. However, if I was given
adequate time to prepare, my essays could be very well organized. I find that after completing an
outline, seventy-five percent of the work is complete. As long as I have developed the structure
first, the words come easily.

Over the years, I have come to realize the importance of rituals in my writing process.
First, I must set the mood. Coincidentally, candles are a very helpful tool I use during my writing
process. I must be completely calm when I am writing, and the candles help to relax me. I also
like to wear my necklace because without it I feel incomplete and unbalanced. I can't count the
number of times I reach up to my neck and slide the pendant back and forth, contemplating what
to write next. Often, when writing a first draft, I can sit there for several minutes at a time doing
absolutely nothing. I have a favorite office chair that spins that I have had for the past four or
five years. Almost everything I've written since ninth grade has been done in that chair. In fact,
I'm sitting in the chair right now. When I get to that dreaded place in my writing process where I
don't know where to go next I just spin in my chair and let my mind wander. Soon, I forget that
I'm trying to find something to say and I just think. Then, out of nowhere an idea will pop into
my head as soon as I forget I'm looking for one. I'm back at it.
A huge part of my ability to write is what kind of environment I am in. I have found my
best writing is between eight and ten in the morning. This theory was put to the test my senior
year of high school. The absolute only time I could write my essays for scholarships or
applications was Saturday mornings. Maybe it goes back to my years of dance when every
Saturday morning was spent in the studio. That is just a creative and productive time for me. If I
wait until later in the day, I am too distracted by what is going on in my life. Maybe I'll hang out
with my friend tonight... I wonder what is for dinner... That math test was really hard... The
number of things to divert my attention escalates the longer I wait to start writing. Clutter also
gets me off track. My desk must be completely clean and my floor must be free of any piles of
clothes or shoes. If there are any homework assignments or books laying around my mind is sure

to wander over to them and start worrying. I really need to finish this paper so I can do my
chemistry homework before it's due...
I have always been described as "passionate." When I was just a toddler, my many fits
were due to my passion. When I got frustrated by homework it was my passion for learning that
was to blame. All my parents' money that went to my career in dance was because I was
passionate about it. Now, my determination in my career goal has led me to UNCC because of
my passion for helping people and my interest in the human body. Being the drama queen that I
am, I don't think I have ever done anything without meaning. The same should be true for
writing. Writing should make a difference, and it is writing like this that I strive to imitate.
Writing that is not just words on a paper, but ideas etched on a heart.