I chose to write a letter because I think it creates a sense of intimacy and personal connection between the reader and myself. Since the purpose of this assignment is to write about my own experience with writing and since I cite non-academic examples quite a few times, a letter felt best suited for this assignment. I also chose an informal tone for this assignment since that made it less daunting and easier to work on. Hopefully it is also easier to read for my audience.

   A Letter to my Cousin

Dear Anisa,

In this letter, I am going to detail my personal relationship with writing as well as what I have learned about writing so far. I talk about mainly my English class and how it transformed my relationship with writing from despising it to making it tolerable. I also try to explain my theory as well as practice of writing.

As you already know, I am not as passionate about writing as I am about reading. Mostly because I am unable to find the right words and have difficulty organizing my thoughts. I can analyze and scrutinize others’ work well but when it comes to writing on my own, I feel unmotivated and anxious due to a fear of failure and anxiety of saying something I would regret later on. However, as you may have noticed, I am starting to overcome this debilitating fear and crippling anxiety of not being able to organize my thoughts properly. I am aware that this is something we both struggle with, so I am going to try and explain my writing process as well as how I have struggled and what I have learned. 

Before starting my Freshman English Composition class, I believed writing was tedious as well as overbearing. Writing felt like a repetitive process of brainstorming, choosing a topic, brainstorming, researching, brainstorming, writing whatever it is you wanted to write and then receiving a grade for said assignment. I was introduced to rhetorical strategies and was taught how to analyze them in others’ work but was not taught how to incorporate them in my own. Writing was introduced to me as a chore, something you would get over and done with as soon as possible due to its tedious nature. It was very evident from my writing that it felt like a burden as opposed to something people enjoy doing. I came into class with a negative attitude towards writing, something that lasted well into the semester, but I realized that one does not write with a repetitive and endless cycle of brainstorming mixed with a little bit of research. Instead, I learnt that everybody has a writing process and it takes time to understand and perfect yours. I think that this is the most important piece of information that you have to remember when writing. I realized this after drafting multiple papers for this class and doing so through different processes. 

For the first assignment, the Source Based Essay, I remember being so demoralized by the word count that I had not started it until a week before it was due. Before coming to this class, I had no clue as to what a rhetorical situation was, let alone how to use it in my practice of writing. So being overwhelmed, I submitted my first draft. I had not followed the steps properly which resulted in a low grade. My writing process was built on the habits I had from high school which was brainstorming, brainstorming and brainstorming. I felt that there was no proper outline to my writing process. After this, I started working through all of the steps in the learning modules- this provided me with a structure to base my writing process and theory off of. The most impactful assignment I worked on would have to be the Research Essay I did. Due to this assignment, I understood the importance of an annotated bibliography. I had never written a research paper before this assignment, so I was new to the format. Doing the research and finding reliable sources proved to be the most important component of this assignment. This would be very obvious to somebody that had already written a research essay earlier but to me, that was unclear. So I had spent more time on writing the essay itself as opposed to finding sources. This proved to be unfruitful, however, this helped my practice and theory of writing since I was able to start developing my theory of writing and work on a research paper for my Macaulay Honors College Seminar Class. After this assignment, I realized that I had developed a part of my theory of writing which was: brainstorming, research, first draft, peer review and last draft. However, this still had not helped me since I still had not felt satisfied with what I was doing. This changed with the composition in two genres assignment. This assignment had compelled me to put the different rhetorical strategies I had learned to use. Earlier, I rarely ever considered the audience and genre of what I was writing and how it affected my writing. I would write letters the same way I would an article. I would also rarely ever think of my own stance on an issue. However, due to this assignment, I started to create a rough outline of who my audience would be and what genre I would use. I also started working on what tone I wanted for this assignment as well as what my purpose would be. Having a purpose for my writing also greatly impacted it since it redirected my focus when I found myself getting off track- which again would be very obvious however, due to lack of experience, I had not known this. Due to this assignment, I had further refined my theory of writing. I think what works for me is: brainstorming, research, rough outline, first draft, peer review and final draft. Lastly, for the theory of writing, I realized that self-reviewing also helped. As previously mentioned, I had not known how to do a self-review since I am horrible at providing feedback to myself. However, with help from the internet and simply looking at my work as somebody else’s I was able to provide feedback to myself and consult my peers on what they thought. This brought my theory of writing to brainstorming, research, rough outline (what rhetorical strategies I would use and how to incorporate them), first draft, self review, second draft, peer review and final draft. 

Since beginning this class, my theory as well as practice of writing went from being non-existent to procrastinating to brainstorming, research, rough outline (what rhetorical strategies I would use and how to incorporate them), first draft, self review, second draft, peer review and final draft. My theory of writing has immensely impacted my practice of writing since I feel that there is a process which I can rely on while writing and truly do my best.