My reflection on this narrative writing process is that I felt strange doing freewriting by noticing things happening around me, because when I write, I’m not used to being aware of my surroundings. Doing that really allowed me to relax and focus more on how I feel and what I sense in the moment. I think it also helped me better recall my writing and reading experiences. I found that there is a connection between my ability to write now and my childhood experiences with reading and writing. I think many of my struggles with writing and reading came from my early childhood, and they were areas in which I lacked when I was younger. I think this sentence, “These moments taught me that growth in reading and writing is not a straight line. It curves, pauses, and sometimes restarts, but it moves forward when I keep practicing.” is the most interesting because it speaks to a lot of people, and many can resonate with the experience that sometimes things can be hard and you just have to be patient and learn to overcome the difficulties. I think this is true not only in writing but in anything else in life, too. As long as you are trying your best, you can achieve the things you want to do.
When I first began writing
The Overcast Summer, I brainstormed my most prominent reading moments. To be honest, there weren’t many. However, I realized that the overall change in how I view reading was something I could passionately write about. I remembered when summer reading was first introduced and how distraught I felt once I learned I had to do work over the summer. While writing this piece, I discovered that the change eventually made me enjoy reading. I also realized the impact
Percy Jackson had on my reading journey while I was brainstorming for the page. I believe the most interesting sentence would be when i described first opening
Percy Jackson and how my surroundings impacted me because of the description I used.
My first literacy narrative is about my journey and formative experiences as a reader and writer. Without giving too much away, said experiences were not just school assignments but rather experiences that brought out important emotions and discoveries. The narrative is somewhat chronological as I think back to my first memories of reading and writing and then branch off into elementary, middle, and high school experiences.
The whole process was a series of new experiences. To start, in order to warm up for the narrative, I did a free writing assignment which was something I had never really done before. While a lot of the writing I pumped out in the warmup was sloppy, I was able to recall certain experiences so much more vividly and all they needed was a little bit of polishing. I thought of it as stretching before a basketball game. It’s sort of annoying and it would be more fun to get right into the action, but it really helps you flow and perform. I also found myself getting a little sentimental when having such vivid memories. Maybe it’s because I miss my family a lot and I’m pretty homesick but I felt back home for a little while when doing the exercises. The vividness of my memories that came up from doing the exercises definitely show up in my essay.
The other new experience was the essay itself. I had never thought back to my experiences as a reader and writer before and I had also never written an essay in the style that I did. I wrote in a way that was somewhat loose and journalistic while still keeping in mind that it was for a class and needed to be submitted. As I wrote the essay, I put all my memories down onto paper and then analyzed how they affected my relationship with the skills. I thought about how the skills are taught in schools and why I thought about them negatively for so long. The essay helped me realize how much joy the skills had brought me in my life and how they also built my personality, teaching me how to feel different complex emotions.
Writing the essay was a lot of fun for me. I found that it didn’t feel as hard or as daunting as most essays that length would usually be to me. I got to flow and put my thoughts down on paper without needing to think too hard. My final sentence was one that a lot of people would be intrigued by. The sentence was the concept of a chart with every reading and writing experience I had ever had and a scale to see how formative they were. Would the most memorable experiences be the most formative? An interesting question to ponder.