Meditate Upon the Experiences Writing

¶ … meditate upon the experiences writing over the past semester. Revision, Arrangement, Invention, Delivery and Style (RAIDS) have provided a great framework for me to structure my writing. This framework is provided in heuristic fashion, allowing a sped up analysis via a "fuzzy logic" approach to researching a subject where it is not possible to fully research and investigate a subject. Like the fuzzy logic approach to computer programming (especially with digital computers in appliances), when an exhaustive search is impractical in writing, heuristic methods speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution by using "rule of thumb," educated guesses, intuitive judgment, or common sense reasoning.

Formerly, I was terrified of writing anything but a personal letter or email. I was immediately lost when given a writing assignment before I even began. After getting home school, I might be given a project to write, such as a persuasive essay on "should we pull out of Iraq?" Such writing assignments were the first I ever had and I would spend days and nights on the project. This is akin to have stage fright. Panic came over me and I did not know how to proceed. I was completely unsure about how to write my essay and also I felt frustrated because I was not making progress. My Dad was there for me. He realized that I was a poor writer and he began helping me. He was familiar with mental exercises that sped up the learning and analytic process, so this very much dovetailed with the RAIDS heuristic. He stayed with me throughout the entire writing process. At the end, his encouraging voice helped me to know what to do.

This heuristic approach helped me in high school speech projects. I had little experience in speaking, let alone in how to write a persuasive speech. Just as with writing assignments, I would simply agonize over what subject to write down and then on how to organize the persuasive speech. As time went by, deadlines approached. Again, my beloved dad intervened and encouraged me in a heuristic exercise. Without him, I would have given up. He convinced me that the speech did not have to be perfect or fancy, but should come from my heart and from my experiences. The best inspiration about what to write comes from what one knows. At this time, I decided to write down what came to mind. After giving such a speech, I remembered the same tremendous feeling of accomplishment that I had with the writing exercise. This was because the written piece was my own. A feeling of ownership is a great experience and feeling of accomplishment as I had not written a successful essay or speech previously due to my fear of writing.

Soon afterwards, I was given another short speech assignment that I gave to a bigger group of people. I was able to select any topic that I wanted to. I chose patience as my speech Gathering my study resources, I set about writing a very interesting speech. By this time, had a quite a bit of confidence because I had already written a successful speech. In addition, I was very excited about the speaking opportunity and spent many long hours preparing for the presentation. I noticed that my writing was improving but I still remember having doubts about my speaking and writing abilities.

As I began college I was worried that I would need to write. I remember thinking to myself; how could I avoid writing? I knew that if I got a job I would be required to write letters and reports. I remember beginning to prepare for a college exam and that same fear of writing came over me again. I remember thinking, how would I pass my English composition test if I could not write? Searching the Internet I found a preparatory course for the English composition test. As I started the course my goal was to just pass the English composition test, and try to avoid ever writing again. After sending in an essay to the teacher, he replied with horrible news.

This did not mean I was all the way to success yet. I got a bad grade on a writing assignment and was very discouraged when the person told me that my writing needed a lot of improvement.

The news was very discouraging to me because I did not understand how I could be back to square one. I still felt that I had a passion for writing. I then remembered thinking to myself that I was going to overcome my negative fears and learn how to write more effectively. Then, I started to realize that the quality of my writing slowly improved. I was improving my "learning curve" and was learning faster and incorporating the experiences of failure into my subconsciousness and learning from them. With each attempt, the next writing assignment was better that the previous one and I am now at a much higher level of writing proficiency.