This is the first paper I submitted for my English class. I will be posting future papers here.
When I was young and people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always answered with, �I want to be a writer.� My passion has always been writing. I have kept a journal of some sort since I was eleven or twelve years old, and I have discovered that putting my innermost thoughts onto paper and bearing witness to life�s experiences allows me to learn and grow as an individual. My writing charts my path, tells my secrets and guides the way for me.
I used to think there would be some magical point when I officially would become a writer: college graduation as I walked across the stage to receive my degree in journalism or perhaps the publishing of my first book. I have since learned otherwise. I never did receive that journalism degree, and I have yet to publish my first book. I am, however, a writer. The moment came and went without me realizing it had happened, but it certainly happened.
A year or so after I dropped out of college, I began work at a small weekly paper in the town where I was living. I was a staff and features writer, and I thoroughly enjoyed the writing process, from researching my stories to beating the newspaper�s publishing deadline with just a few minutes to spare. I learned a great deal about the people and places around me as well as the inner workings of city and county governments. I received a tremendous amount of personal satisfaction when people would stop me in the grocery store to compliment me or comment on something I had written. I was living my dream.
I have always had a fascination with the written word, and because of this fascination I have always been a voracious reader. When I was a child, I often could be found inside, curled up with a good book, helping Nancy Drew solve yet another mystery or reading the biography of some famous individual who interested me. As I grew older, my tastes changed, and I began to read the classics as instructed by my high school English teacher and even enjoyed some of the fiction my mother had purchased for herself. In recent years, Shakespeare and Danielle Steele have been shelved, and I have been reading all sorts of self-help manuals that promise to make me a better person, a better mother, a better eater, a better whatever. I decided not too long ago that it was time I become a better writer.
So, it is my hope that by taking Principles of Writing, I will do just that. It has been nearly eighteen years since I have written a paper for college, and the last paper I wrote resulted in a big fat red �C� on the paper and left me with a great amount of fear over the quality of my work. I am taking this course to face that fear, to learn the rules that will help me take my writing to the next level, and, of course, to turn that �C� into an �A�.
