Writing the Literacy Narrative felt simultaneously like writing a personal narrative and also like writing a rhetorical analysis essay. I felt like I had to analyze my achievements as a writer but also how my opinions about writing changed over time. “Intuition and Other Thoughts” was written as I wrote any other piece of writing, which was essentially to write every single thought I had, then cut out anything unnecessary and using that big bulk of writing as an outline. Yet, writing “Intuition and Other Thoughts” was unlike anything else I have ever written. The piece ends up being a love letter to my mother and her major involvement in the type of writer I become. It also speaks on my opinion of the writing-and-revising process.
The writing process was different, due to the X-Pages Exercise. It was very similar to what I usually do but much more helpful when clarifying a single scene, which I ended up embedding into the narrative. The scene I described for the X-Pages Exercise became the frame of the tiny pockets of scenes I added in. I do wonder if it made me too focused on the scene of the narrative, rather than the actual point of the essay. It might be my missing of Texas that may have resulted in too much Waco geography knowledge that any person not from Waco will ever need.
I realized that I have a lot of different, conflicting emotions about writing, which I think a lot of people can say. My mother becoming a central figure of the narrative was not what I was expecting, but looking back, it seems obvious that she would be the focus of how I became the writer that I am today. Funnily enough, if my mother would read the narrative, I think she would tell me the same thing she tells me there, “Get to the point! Write about me less.” I think I used to view myself as a really bad writer but came to acknowledge through writing this that even though I may be a bad writer, it is okay because at least I have room to grow.
I think people would find the sentence, “I am a slow learner, a slow writer—a perfectionist when it comes to word choice and each individual sentence but easily lost when it comes to THE BIG IDEA,” most interesting because it describes what kind of writer I am. Most people expect perfectionism to be helpful when writing or studying, but it can result in a pointless, circular, or even boring piece of writing if you lose sight of the big picture.
The Texas sunset in all its glory…and my friend. Throwing a rock into the lake.
Taken by Josie Sim
