Back to Basics

Reviewing my “This I Believe” assignment I feel confident in my writing. I feel I have a strong voice and can engage readers by using detail. I never really believed this, that I was a strong writer, until receiving feedback from fellow peers and instructors. I enjoy writing because it is a way to express myself in a different way. Though, I have always been very shy about writing as I cannot see a reader’s reaction as they read, the way you can with someone you are talking to face to face. This directly effects my style of writing because I think, almost over think, about how a reader will interpret my work. I go over my writing by trying to read it as if I hadn’t written the piece and analyse the different ways someone reading could ‘pick it apart’. I ask myself how does this flow and what can I improve to make it better or easier to read.

My strength is probably also my biggest weakness. Since I tend to overthink a lot it pushes me towards procrastination due to fear my work will not be good enough. I noticed this during the process of the “This I Believe” (TIB) assignment and it frustrated me a lot. My strategy to improve on it is to give myself time. As I posted in Blog 1, my way of writing is to walk and talk then get things down onto paper. I didn’t allow myself this time to think in my early drafts of the TIB assignment and it resulted in a more stressful process than it needed to be.  

Therefore, moving forward I believe I need to remember what is beneficial to me as a writer. So, write down thoughts and go back to the basics of my writing. Though it maybe is in a little different context with our Species Profile, as it is more professional and along the line of a field of work I wish to enter. That being said, I can still do my research and allow myself time to process the information and plan what I wish to do with it. I still wish to keep my own writing technique in the piece by making it approachable for anyone to read.