Self-Portrait as a Writer

It has taken a long time to begin to figure out me as a writer. I think I am just starting to now because I think I started to give up for a while. I’ve always tried to write the way it seems everyone else does. I finally realized that doesn’t really work for me. For example, if I were to follow the portfolio suggested timeline, the quality of my writing wouldn’t be very good.  This is how I write best:

First, I must read the assignment a day or two before I start writing it. I break down the directions and the rubric into individual steps and put that into the document. I go ahead and format the document, too. It is best if I don’t write anything else yet, but if I have an important idea then, or before I start writing, I can put in a bullet point or two.

Then, when I come back to the assignment, I dictate the whole thing into OneNote trying not to stop and edit all the mistakes it makes as I go. I find this hard because I want to edit every time I see a mistake. Most dictation programs do not understand me very well, but OneNote does best.

Next, I copy and paste what I dictated into Word and clean it up. This step is important because Word helps me in ways I tend to skip. It has a thesaurus, “spelling and grammar,” and word count. 

The next day, I edit: I edit and add that day. Then I come back the next day and edit and add some more. By the third day of editing, I have a pretty good product.

Finally, I use Grammarly.  There are usually many suggestions.

It is odd because this is opposite of how I want to write. Honestly, I find each of these steps very hard because I want to do it all at once. For me to do well, though, I need a minimum of three days. That is okay because most assignments with many points give more days to prepare.

It is funny that we call it “writing” because the worst thing I can do is pick up a pencil and write it on paper. I have always been stubborn about trying, even when I paid the price with grades or disappointed people, until my grades just kept getting worse. I think of it as composing now, not writing.

I think I will continue to figure out me as a writer because I am curious again about what works best.  (Oddly, it does not take nearly as much time to write a song or a poem. It is not faster because they are fewer words than paragraphs, it is just that the writing flows better somehow.)  Even more, I think I will continue trying to figure it out because I am beginning to feel proud of my work again.