Writing Reflection

My writing has definitely improved over the year, and a surprising amount at that. Take, for example, my American icons piece. That was an example of typical, “10^th grader who is now an 11^th grader but still writes like a 10^th grader” writing. It was good, but not great. Over the year, we did a few more writing projects, had a bit more time to grow and learned some writing tips. We learned what to do when it came to sentence structure (concerts, not pancakes) and verbs (avoid “–ing”s), and I then took these tips and incorporated them into later writing pieces. Then Ampersand came along and it was my time to shine.

Through all the drafts I did, my Ampersand article changed drastically from one thing to another. It started as base-level 11^th grader stuff, but because we had to focus so much on perfecting the article, I pushed myself and made it into an incredibly polished, professional piece of work.

In the future, I plan to build even more upon these basic writing tips and tricks. I’ve learned the joys of drafting and what it does for my writing. Before now, I BSed drafts just to get a grade for having them. But, because the standards were so high this semester, I’ve learned (through Ampersand) to always starts with a base and work up. Reading books like The Grapes of Wrath has also gone a long way in showing me how clean, professional writing looks.Using the combined methods of following the plethora of writing tips I’ve received this year and drafting my work several times, I can assure that my writing next year is polished like a diamond in an engagement ring store.