Dani Portes

ENG160

Sara Vinciguerra

3 May 2023

 

Dear Portfolio Reader,

 

          My relationship with writing can be inconsistent at times. It truly depends on the prompt or the topic of my choosing. My attitude towards writing can range from my mind bursting with an endless array of ideas or an insane writer’s block. When I enter a stage of writer’s block it feels nearly impossible to come out of. To overcome writer’s block, I try to change my perspective on what the prompt is. Starting an essay using a different process from what I am used to can be helpful.

          Throughout this course, my attitude towards writing has changed. By simplifying the prompt and outlining everything before I begin to write it creates a brand-new perspective. I like to vary the way I start writing my essays because it keeps things interesting. The order in which I write my papers can be very random at times. Writing the introduction and conclusion first helps me a lot when it comes to outlining because it keeps me from going on a tangent and straying from the main prompt. If I know how the essay begins and how it ends, the structure of the body paragraphs become much clearer. When it comes to research papers, I search for the evidence and write my body paragraphs first so that the difficulty of research is out of the way. This makes writing less stressful and keeps me motivated to write.

          I feel that my rhetorical analysis essay is very well written due to how passionate I was about the song I had chosen. Black Love by Masego is a very meaningful song to me. It changed my perspective and see things in a more positive light. Being able to put into words how I enjoy the things I listen to in my everyday life is a new skill I have developed. Trying to translate the imagery of sound into words is something I found to be difficult. Words and sound can share the same message but have a different effect on how the listener/reader perceives what’s trying to be shared.

          Throughout this semester, I have learned how to outline my writing and figure out which parts of an essay truly matter. There is no strict way of writing an essay, everyone’s process is different. When my professor assigned the reading “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamont in the beginning of the course it was a great motivator. It really opened my eyes to how you can’t expect or strive for perfection immediately from the start. Keeping this new realization in mind, it makes writing essays a lot easier. I feel prepared to tackle new prompts and topics because of how much I’ve changed my attitude towards writing. At first, I had lacked a lot of motivation to write when ideas never came to mind.  But now I know how to overcome writer’s block. My writing is always growing.

Sincerely,

Dani