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MAJOR PAPER 1

Major Paper 1

Discovery Within Writing and Beyond It

Rachel Mathew

ENC 1101

Professor Cooper

September 14, 2022

I always had a very selective approach when it came to writing. I always loved writing

stories and elements that feel within the art of orating; however, I spent many nights dreading an

essay deadline after procrastinating on them for so long out of existential dread. Still to this day,

I find it very hard to force out words on a document or keep a flow of continuous words spilling

long enough to complete something that can even be qualified as an “essay”. However, in my

past, I used to find it absolutely horrid to sit down and just write. I rambled, I ranted, I spilled out

words in bursts of spontaneous ideas, I kept ideas bottled in my head and grew frustrated when

not writing them down, and stressed to therefore, memories them, but I never simply sat down

and wrote. At least, this is what I had perceived long ago. For years, I believed my writing

wasn’t a valid writing style or that I didn’t like writing in general. I tried molding my work into

things that I saw other people did, because I just wanted to not tank my GPA with this one high

school composition class. Despite this, over the years certain experiences have led me to finding

and developing my writing style as it is, and have created the mindset that I have towards writing

in the present day.

Up until 10th grade, I despised English class for one reason. The essays. It was, in my

head a laborious process, where I usually ended up stressed and staring at an open Word

document hours before the deadline trying to manage something coherent on a page for the

grade. I never understood what to write as it was hard to get things on a paper and even then, I

wasn’t confident in them at all. In the end, I would just search up outlines and follow them to a T

with my concepts and words to format it as I saw was the “right” approach, and turn in the

assignment. Whenever I turned in assignments, there was a deep dissatisfaction pooling in my

wasn’t even that good nor did it actually represent me.

However, this would change when my 10th grade English teacher introduced that she would have

normal peer reviews and drafting processes where we could garner feedback and then build on it

to turn in the final essay. This procedure was completely new to me, and upon discovering it, and

actually getting feedback from my classmates was more helpful than I initially thought it would

be. As I tend to overthink and end up being indecisive till the deadline crunch, I found that the

feedback gave me feedback that would answer my questions and help me be in tune with the

assignment rather than seeing what I could scramble up in my brain soup. This reminds me of the

threshold concept: “Writing is a Process, All Writers Have More to Learn and Writing is Not

Perfectible” (Adler-Kassner & Wardle, 2016, p. 15), most notably the part that states writing is

not perfectible, as that was something that I struggled with a lot, oftentimes trying to model the

structures of my writing into restrictive formats that others seem to use or at least ones that were

more standarised. This experience helped me realise how important to have feedback and the

many ways that it could be influential and I still regard feedback to be a good way of direct ways

to improve my work.

Similarly, to all my other previous disdains with writing, I struggled with just the concept

of writing essays on boring topics. It would be to say that I was not at all interested in writing

analyses of anything informative, but that was not entirely accurate as the subject matter was just

blandly presented to me. To give an analogy, if someone gave you the soggiest looking piece of

cake, you would be less likely to eat it, even the taste would have been better than anything you

had ever consumed ever. Like all my previous assumptions about English class, I really dislike

writing essays as I found it a chore. However, I am an avid storyteller and like relaying fictional
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stories, even writing some as a hobby in my free time. I always wondered in my subconscious

how writing essays could be such a pain but writing other things wasn’t. Despite this, I had a

creative writing teacher in high school, they were very keen on emphasizing that all writing can

be fun and I found that in some assigned stuff that they could actually connect pretty well with

themes I was learning in English class at the same time. It was around the time we were reading

Shakespeare (whom I have a tough relationship with reading his work to be honest) that I

realized I could put a fun spin on it when it came to essays. Relating this to the threshold

concept: Genres: Writing Responds to Repeating Situations through Recognisable Situations”

(Adler-Kassner & Wardle, 2016, p. 17), finding recognition in analysing work in literature

classes, made the experience far more enjoyable. This whole experience as a whole got me to

look at things that I find initially to be a little bit of work to do or just simply not that interesting

in a way of, “Okay, how can I make this interesting now” and then allows me to put in little

snippets to entertain myself, the writer, as well.

And with that it made it easier to write in a way that could relate to such recognisation

and display a style reminiscent of retelling a story, (while in the case of Shakespeare be able to

nitpick and subtly make fun of things in the background).

One last experience that holds very high significance in my scattered brain vogues similar

to the last one. I always had this stigma of sorts that I went off topic too much or went off the

rails of what I was supposed to be doing and it felt stressful to try and adhere and double check

and triple check the rubric. I stared at many guidelines and assignment descriptions several times

out of the paranoia that I was messing up by going off track. In this, my writing tended to be

either stale or just trying to emulate a baseline from others. There was a lack of individuality that
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I loathed. An experience that I would have in 11th grade was when they introduced English

portfolios. In these, my teacher did not only ask us to track our previous essays but gave us a

series of journal entries. Some had prompts, but then some had what she called “free entries”

where we were allowed to write anything we wished as long as it fell within professional

standards of course.

These free entries stumped me at first to be honest. I wasn’t sure what to write but at

some point, I heard small little pointless stories that my friends wrote and thought maybe I’ll just

write whatever I wish. So, I told a story. I wrote a journal entry about how I went to Disney with

my aunt and cousins and how I witnessed her bite into one only for her tooth to come out with it

and how this created my aversion to yellow starbursts. In this, I rambled, and I went on but I

connected it to an introspection of how associations perpetuate fear in one person and something

within that range. With that experience, I kind of basically realized that you can make

somethings out of nothings. And more importantly it reduced my fear of rambling, as I got a

hundred on the assignment, and grades are a big motivator, and that has made be able to freer in

writing. This experience is reminiscent of the threshold concept, ““Good” Writing is Dependent

on Writers, Reading, Situation, Technology and Use” (Adler-Kassner & Wardle, 2016, p. 12),

where the use of writing has shown, in my eyes to be powerful in how you’re able to convey

things. And such purpose in message can help advance one’s writing style as mine has changed

over the years.

Overall, building up confidence in my writing as well as a general rule of thumb to break

away from the overall strict formats that I had tried so hard to squeeze and contain my thoughts
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in, leaving jagged and incomplete writing, have allowed to be freer and more expressive in my

writing. My past experiences have made me realise a lot of things, and, mostly, I am very

grateful that I can still write.

References

Wardle, Elizabeth & Downs, Doug, (2016). “Identifying Threshold Concepts & Prior

Experiences”, Writing about Writing, Bedford/St. Martin's.