Reflective Letter
Dear Random Person reading this, who is most likely the person who assigned this letter thing to us in the first place. I won’t name names, you know who you are, at least I should hope so. Anyways this is probably the longest salutation ever written so I will get on with the point….wait for it…..now: I will now proceed to enlighten Dear Random Person of all the ins and outs of the Wonderful Writing World of Kelley. Before you can truly understand something though it is necessary to understand the process under which it was formulated. So, when I am writing something I don’t jump through any fancy hoops, such as detailed outlines, beforehand, no I go for the throat, I start at the beginning, the introduction that it is. The introduction for me is the hardest part, followed by the conclusion. I usually find myself fresh out of inspiration for long stretches, having to eke out the introductory paragraph sentence by painful sentence. Needless to say I spend a lot more time comparatively on the introduction then the rest of the work. So in trying to get the right flow of words I tend to procrastinate while I am writing and spend lots of time looking at my nails or at blinking lights in the room that have suddenly become strangely fascinating. In fact that is exactly what I did for the first part of this letter; at least I am consistent. For some reason I just find it hard to make an interesting and short summation of the ideas to be addressed in the main body of the writing. I think this is because when I am not being lazy I like to take an idea and address all of its different aspects and angles individually and completely. I don’t like cutting short my ideas, which is essentially what an introduction does, this is also why I tend to write more than I have to and go over any word limits. Well after the introduction is finally over I can start on the body where I usually get into a rhythm and everything goes a lot swifter. For the body I sometimes write out a vague outline, which consist of writing out in what order I am going to put my main points, the ideas, questions, or whatnot that I have to address. This is what I did with this letter and is why I am starting with my process of writing first; it’s kind of funny that I am using my writing process to write about my writing process. Sometimes I don’t even do that and just have the plan worked out in my head. The reason it do it this way is I find major outlines too bothersome, they take too much time, I rarely follow them, not using them works well for me, and writing a detailed outline tends to be just as hard as the introduction. Last but not least, the conclusion I basically model after the introduction, using the ideas I had before on how to sum up the main points. This whole process I usually commence and complete the day before the writing is due. Let’s just face it I am a true born procrastinator especially when it comes to things I don’t want to do…cough…not that I procrastinated on this assignment or didn’t want to do it….cough…anyways. As for my strengths and weaknesses, which would include my procrastination process, or what types of writing I enjoy best I am not going to address them here. I have already taken the pains to answer those two questions as well as two on how I use writing in the Reflections on Writing assignment, which I called Writing About Writing. I feel that repeating them would be well, repetitive. If Dear Random Person wants the answers
they should go seek them out their selves. This is not me being lazy but me merely trying to promote assiduousness on the part of Dear Random Person. I think despite my continuous procrastination and terrible planning and time management when it comes to writing, or any assignment for that matter, I have grown as an author. My writing has definitely improved since I was one of the new kids on the block, a lowly freshman in high school. At the beginning of last year before I had much practice in writing at the high school level I used to get mostly fours and threes on the six traits rubric. I then graduated to getting a mixture of fours and fives and a few sixes when we did more creative writing. This year I got a majority of fives with a few fours, which is cool. The area where I really think I have grown the most is voice I have learned better how to project an interesting voice into my writing even in the academic essays. The area where I used to have a lot of trouble in and still do is conventions. I can recognize parts of speech and diagram sentences like a mouse can eat cheese but punctuation and spelling, well let’s just say it’s all Greek to me. Spelling I fear I will never fully understand, it is continuously mind boggling to me why words can’t be spelled the way they sound. I especially hate those stupid silent letters, they have no purpose but to lie in wait and trip you up. I tell you with friends like spelling who needs enemies? Specifically over this year I have noticed an improvement in voice and surprisingly in conventions, though that may be just do to the type of writing we were doing. I enjoy creative writing the best because I like to have free rein to put my uniqueness and humor into the writing, which I can’t do in a strictly academic essay. Also I do better on an assignment when I enjoy it more, I put more of my voice into it and so do better in that area. This is probably why I received better scores on the previous two writing assignments, which were a personal narrative and a persuasive essay. The personal narrative I actually kind of enjoyed and the persuasive essay I hated less then a strait academic essay because I can be more creative in my writing while trying to persuade, it’s also like arguing which I love to do. This brings me to my final explanation; it answers the two ultimate questions what and why. First: what is in this portfolio? Well two of my essays from this year for starters, the narrative and a persuasive essay on assisted-suicide. Also included are three examples of writing prompts showcasing three different thinking levels and the aforementioned Writing About Writing. Now for the why. First off I put essays, writing prompts, and a thing about writing up there because I had to. The reason I chose those two particular essays is because they were the ones I did best on this year, I also hated them the least….connection?....hmmm. I chose the Haiku writing prompt as an example of Application because I took knowledge of what a Haiku was and applied that to write a few. I put it up because there two inspiring Haikus at the end about geese. I chose the found poem for Rayona as an example of Synthesis because I took old ideas from the book to create a poem about Rayona. This one I put up because I liked how it sounded, and even though I don’t like poetry it was still cool, if I do say so myself. Last but definitely least liked is the answer to a question about a Chronicle of a Death Foretold as an example of Evaluation. It is an example of evaluation because to answer the question I had to asses theories and compare ideas. I put this prompt up because I knew it was an example of evaluation and I still hadn’t written it in my journal yet so I decided to kill two birds with one stone.
That’s all there is to this portfolio, except for this letter, but talking about what is in it would be stupid since whichever random person is reading this just read it and found out. Also what I just wrote is basically all I have to say about my writing so I have nothing else to write about that would be interesting and germane. I could rant about how much I hate spelling some more but I suspect that would get old fast. So I bid Adieu to Dear Random Person, may you read my writings again, unless of course you don’t want to, I promise there will be no unspeakable consequences. So long and thanks for all the fish.