Windsor - My Reader / Writer Proflie

 

  When I was a child my experiences with reading mainly consisted of me exploring the various picture books scattered about the house. My first memories of reading are being read these books my parents and preschool teachers. Before I could even read, and even after I learned, one book I especially liked was If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, by Laura Numeroff. The pictures were fun and the story was engaging.  It wasn't until I started school that I learned how to understand the words that when along with the pictures. Ms.Foster was both my kindergartener and first grade teacher at Ridgeview Elementary School. It's in her class I have the most exceptional memories of learning how to write. The neatness of Ms.Foster's letters always captivated me, and she was an inspiration the got me interested in the aspects of writing. Alas, there was a great deal of frustration when I could hardly get the letters between the lines. Just a couple a years later, though, I remember writing my first short stories. One in particular I was proud of was about a family that got sucked into the T.V,  and they escaped by turning the power off. My teacher complimented me for my work, telling me to remember her when I become a famous author. This encouragement, and my enjoyment of reading on my own, gave my first idea to what I wanted to be when I grew up: an author. 

    Unfortunately, this is not an aspiration I've stuck with. I decided that it wouldn't be the most rewarding profession for me. My interest in reading, however, hasn't diminished. I read almost daily, and I particularly enjoy fantasy and action-focused fiction. I enjoy books imaginative plots and unique characters. Inspired by these entrancing stories, several times I've attempted to write chapter books on my own time. I go into a story exited to write. I'm good a coming up with creative ideas, and setting a captivating tone, but my stories don't go anywhere because I get intimidated by excessive plot details. Before I start writing anything, though, I make a plan. For fictional stories, I come up with a good plot outline in my head, and try to incorporate any extravagant ideas. For essays, I want to make sure I have all the research and background knowledge organized before I dive in. When I'm writing, I'm ninety percent sure in what I am going to say. However, when I reread what I had just wrote, I always find a lot of problems. This ability can be beneficial for essays. Since they're short, I can read over it four or five times to make sure I have everything right, and when I have nothing else to fix, I call it done. For stories, on the other hand, rereading over and over just makes me lose confidence and forget how I planned to continue the story. I always get snagged up by sentence structure. I like any piece of writing to flow. So I repeatedly revise until the tense matches up, and so the comma placement and sentence length give a nice rhythm. In essays, it's especially difficult. I have to make sure I smoothly transition from one piece of information, to the explanation, to another peace of information. I think getting better at essays gets simply requires practice. The more I practice incorporating information and the more I practice explaining it, the better I'll be at insuring it flows. For my stories, I need to be able to focus on what I am writing in the moment, and not worry about future plot details or the grammar of what I've already written. I should wait for the second draft. Maybe I should take some advice from the writing I enjoy myself. Good fiction writing to me is writing the causes emotion. If a book can make me excited, fearful, or sad for it’s characters, it’s a good piece of writing. As for nonfiction, I appreciate a work that I can understand what information it's relaying or what point it's getting across without having to reread it.

    Past high school graduation, I will move on to college. I imagine the amount of writing I do will be far greater, and, depending on the class, will have to be more technical or creative. Past college,  I will hopefully have accomplished becoming an engineer. During the job, reading and writing may be no more than a tool. I imagine it will be a lot more technical and information focused, so my essay-writing skills will come in handy. Though I doubt that I'll ever stop reading for fun. I will always enjoy exiting fiction stories. One day I hope to be able to finally finish writing a chapter book, even if by then writing fiction is just a hobby.