Personal Narrative: Writing Process

So, about the writing process...

It went/is going surprisingly better than I thought it would. At first, it really sucked. I sat and stared at a blank word document for about 20 minutes before I actually put one word down on the page. I had had a couple of ideas in my head, but nothing concrete. I kept thinking that if I were to write a personal narrative about myself, the idea would come to me right away. It's about me and I know me best, right? It was definitely harder than I thought to come up with a topic, though. At first I tried to think of things that were important in my life, like my grandpa for example. Some events that I have been through with him have definitely changed me. But I knew if I wrote about that, it would end up being more of a profile about Big G (he deserves a great big profile, so maybe that's an idea for the next assignment). I thought about the comments on my last post. Maybe I could write about my experience getting a tattoo. But I knew if I wrote about that, it would end up being a lot like the piece we read on the same topic. I wanted something original, something unique to me.

Then I kept thinking that maybe I was like Reid. I have been through some life-changing-like events in my life, but maybe I'm void of emotion, or immune to it, because I didn't think any of those things had really changed my life. Maybe I'm just being silly.

So, I began to write with one of the non-concrete ideas I had in my head, which was actually something that Marin made me think about in her comment about my first post. She brought up my notation of my logical scientist quality. The first thing that came to mind was my usually logical decision-making process and how it was recently challenged. I took that and ran with it. Once a couple sentences were down, I realized that I had had this concrete idea all along. I think I wrote/am writing a piece about something that definitely changed my life (or at least my outlook on certain things).

It was really surprising to me how fast everything came out and how well it came together as I was writing. It also surprised me how quickly the first draft was realized. I can already recognize the turn in my story. I also think the voice sounds like me, but I'm going to have to read it out loud and rework it a bit just to make sure. I can definitely recognize that the flow is characteristic of me and of my logicality, with a few twists thrown in to make it interesting. I had mentioned that I would take the example of the flow from Badge of Courage and make it mine, and I think I did that fairly well. The only thing I'm still struggling with is the development of my 'I' character. I think I've got the hang of it, but I still don't know if I've developed me enough, or too much, etc. That will take some reworking as well before I'm satisfied.

Overall, this process is fun, to be honest. I am looking forward to posting my draft on Tuesday and getting feedback from my group on what I need to do to make it better.