Personal Narrative: My Writing

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MY WRITING
Well, where to begin except that, I am not much of a writer, but what really makes a good writer? Personally, I haven’t written a paper/essay in over 12 years which was back in high school. The only things I do write now are texts, emails, lists and notes to myself/ girlfriend. I have a substantial amount of things that have happened to me in my life but it would probably take a couple of novels to describe every little detail, and since that is not the assigned task, I will sum it up as much as I can. First of all I’m 28 years old, I have been on my own up until about a year ago, when I began dating my girlfriend, Jessica. I understand that many people including myself have had to overcome many different
My mother; when I was 6 or 7 was diagnosed with multiple myeloma; a type of bone cancer, she was told she did not have long to live and that put a strain on our already well conflicted family. She ultimately survived well past the expectancy that the doctor had given her, 14 years, until her ultimate passing.
During her long fight I did not really have what is considered a normal childhood.
I was obligated to grow up and take care of things myself a lot faster than expected. Such as doing laundry, cooking, cleaning the house, and buying groceries. After she passed, I have had many manual labor jobs in the
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construction industry, thanks to the help of my brother, Brian. He taught me how to weld and I caught on very quickly, so I started working all over the west coast and eventually ended up as a welder in the shipyard here in Portland. About 6 months ago, my brother died of a heart failure, and that has had; shall I say an unpleasant impact on my family and I. Before he died, I had been over the lower level construction job and decided I should go to college for the first time and become an engineer. Here I am trying my best to get started and I know it is
Having some background noise, does not really matter what it is as long as it’s not loud and obnoxious, but I think I do my best when I’m by myself versus being in a large crowd/group of people. I like writing with a computer/phone other than pen and paper because it seems as if it reaches a finalized stage a lot faster, whereas with paper, after you’re done you have to basically rewrite the whole thing, and type it out on a computer anyway. If I have writers block, I find the best thing to do is to take a break. No more than an hour or two and come back to it fresh. All of this happens in stages and not usually in any particular order. After reading, “Practical Advice” in, ‘The Writers Presence’, a few quotes stood out to me. From the section, “Getting Started”, in, ‘Practical Advice’, I really agreed with Mark Twain’s quote: “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret to starting is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one” (11). I agreed with this one because I really had a tough time starting this essay, but once I organized my thoughts just a bit, it was not as