Personal Narrative: What I Learned In My Writing Process

Throughout the years I have dreaded writing because I lacked the skills necessary to be an efficient writer. I would spend so much time stressing over all the skills I didn’t know that I never had the time to enjoy the writing process. By taking this course, I have learned valuable and essential skills to make the writing process more enjoyable. Furthermore, over the course of this semester I have flourished into a more confident and focused writer. A major factor that has contributed to this shift in my writing abilities is the process by which I write my papers. Before taking this course, I never saw the importance of prewriting, and I truthfully thought of it as a waste of time. However, I now consider it to be absolutely essential to my writing process. Through brainstorming, list making, and outlining I have learned to organize my thoughts into a structure that makes sense for the topics I write about. Not only does it help me to focus my ideas around a central topic, it also helps me to have better time management when writing papers. Before I started prewriting, I would wait until the last minute to write my entire paper. Prewriting helps me to take it a little bit at a time,
My writing is easier to understand and more effective for communication because I have learned valuable grammar and punctuation rules. I always thought that if I didn’t understand grammar rules by now, there would be no chance for me to ever understand them, but this semester proved me wrong. Now, I enjoy learning about these rules, so they stick better in my mind. I’ve learned that it is the seemingly miniscule aspects that can help or hinder me when writing. For example, placing a comma in the wrong place can alter the entire meaning of a sentence. It’s crucial for me that my grammar and punctuation make sense and do not distort the meanings of my