Zachary Alexander

Miss E.
UWRT 1103-80043
24 September 2014
Write it Again!?
From a young age, literacy has been a major part of our lives. Literacy is just being able
to communicate and understand the topics, words, or meanings used in the communication.
Living in todays very social world, it is definitely important to be able to communicate with
others and therefore literacy just comes naturally as a requirement. From our first few years, we
begin school where we are tasked with learning the standards of literacy and communication set
forth by this society. Soon after we learn the basics of written language we are encouraged to
form more extensive thoughts and write these thoughts in a way where we can most effectively
communicate. This process of learning and attempting, or rather attempting then learning,
continues on throughout our life, even past school. From my many attempts to create good works
of writing, I have come to a fairly obvious but often overlooked (at least by me) observation.
That observation is you rarely write something good the first time. This means to say that if you
just come up with some ideas for a story and decide to write it out, it most of the time is very
much not what you expected, nor wanted it to be. This is true for a lot of things. You can practice
writing songs many times, but that does not mean you can create your best song without
concentrated effort.
Writing, like creating a song or painting, is a process. The more you work on it, the better
your finished product will be. Even great writers rough drafts arent published. They work hard,
through a process, to create something they deem to be good enough. They write an idea, and

then rewrite an idea many times. In my opinion, Im not a very good or developed author; I
rarely rewrote large portions of my work. If I needed to complete an assignment, it usually
involved writing the whole thing out, then going back to change only a few errors and where it
didnt sound normal or make sense. I never put as much effort into considering other aspects of
the paper such as what my audience would really be interested in reading or how I could get a
point across in a different way to invoke different feelings from the readers. This, I feel, came
from the fact that I never really enjoyed writing that much, or had the chances to write about
things that I really enjoyed. The times where I could write about what I chose and did enjoy were
my best, but I remember focusing too much on the exact format or other things that would
influence my grade compared to really writing something I would be proud of. Therefore I have
come to the conclusion that writing rarely starts out great, but when really worked on, and a lot
of the times rewritten, it can become something really worthy of the effort. Many of my
experiences with writing have led me to this conclusion.
I remember once when I was very young, probably my first or second year in grade
school, I had to write my first story. It was only a short paragraph, but I was completely
uninterested by the idea. I dont think I really even understood exactly what we needed to do.
Anyway, I knew I had to do it, so I thought of an idea and just quickly wrote a slew of five
sentences. I thought I had it done, but apparently we were supposed to go through the writing
process. This meant choosing a topic, brainstorming, planning what would happen, and then
writing a rough draft to be checked by the teacher before turning in the final paragraph. I just
saw this as a bunch of unnecessary work. I remember letting my mind wander as I slowly
stopped listening to the instructions given. All I had to do was write a few simple ideas down in
order to make a small story. It was barely even a story. Why all this work? I ended up just

skipping most of the planning, and I barely even changed the spelling of a few words between
the rough draft and the final draft. Now Im not sure how much my paragraph really would have
improved from following all those steps at such a young age, but I feel this was when I first
started to show my disinterest for the writing process.
Contrastingly, last year, I was tasked by the fine authorities of the Charlotte Mecklenburg
School System to produce a senior project required for my graduation . The time allotted for this
project was usually two years, but since I had never been a pupil of CMS before my senior year
of high school, I had to do it in half the time. The project consisted of three parts, one: the
research paper on my topic of interest, two: the product, and three: the portfolio documenting all
I had created. The first year is normally given for the research paper portion of the assignment.
Everyone in my class was finished with their research paper before the school year even started,
and I had yet to even consider a topic! I really dreaded the assignment. Every day I would go
home from school every day, and at least once a week, my mom would question me on my
progress.
So, how much of your paper have you written so far? My mom would question
questioned. Not much yet... I said irritably. Youre not going to have forever to do it,
you know. Mom said. You should at least get something written down.
I was unsure how to even start and the whole project just stood there looming in front of me as a
thick wall of work needed to be done. It seemed like a very daunting task to say the least, and I
dont think this helped me go through the writing process any better. Despite this, I really wanted
to make something I liked. I wanted to do better than I had before, so I put the effort in. I decided
to do my research paper on one of my favorite topics: computers! My overall paper summed up

every rudamentory component of a modern PC while going into extra detail about the specific
functions of the motherboard and BIOS. In addition my paper went on to explain the complex
way a computer interprets analog data through sampling, and how this is fundamentally different
from the continuous flow of energy and information that actually occurs. This in turn explained,
the reason computers are limited in their use. To get my points across without completely boring
my readers, I planned, drafted, redrafted, and drafted again. I remember sitting in my room,
trying to think of things I could add or make clearer. I went through specific steps of planning,
making outlines, and gathering information to aid in the writing process. The light from my
window was slowly fading as the hours passed. Although I still do not consider myself that great
of an author, and my final paper wasnt anything too incredibly impressive, I feel going through
and writing my thoughts down multiple times helped tremendously; I ended up passing all three
parts with nearly if not perfect scores.
In an even more successful instance, I had a similar writing task given to me my junior year of
highschool. The problem being after completing that paper, and realizing I needed to have one
written for my new school, I was shockingly told the type of research paper I had written my
junior year was not on a topic that I could viably use to complete my senior project at NWSA.
Despite this, my junior research paper on the biblical symbolism in the Chronicles of Narnia
series was a major stepping stone in my progression as a writer. I was forced to learn MLA
quickly and use it correctly. In addition, I went through more of the writing process in this paper
than I had ever done before. I used rough drafts of outlines, note cards, peer review, teacher
review, multiple paper rough drafts and multiple revisions. My final paper was something I could
truly be proud of despite not overly enjoying the topic.

These instances in my life have shown mehelped me understand the importance of

developing my writing and have shaped my current belief about writing today. The writing
process can be tedious, complicated and ambiguous, but no one beyond grade school is going to
force you to use it. We have been given the guideline for creating great work, now it is up to us
to utilize it. If you think about it, it is pretty silly we, as newborn writers in early school, still
thought that we were above the writing process. Even the best writers rewrite their ideas, why
should I settle for the first words I put on the paper. If at first you dont succeed, try again, and
after you think youre done, you can still make it better.