Professor Maloney,

Writing is something that I never thought I particularly excelled at. It has always been something that I have had to work hard at and never have I found pieces that I have written to be extraordinary. Writing is though something that I do enjoy doing, especially journalistic writing. In high school, I wrote briefly for my school’s newspaper, and it was something that I thoroughly enjoyed. I did not write on this paper for very long because I started it at the end of my senior year, but I definitely enjoyed the experience of news writing. I liked the idea of writing more concise pieces that did not need to fit with the traditional essay format. Shorter, more straightforward ideas come more naturally to me. I also enjoyed writing about real events and facts. This made writing my pieces easier because I was simply displaying the facts for my reader in an engaging way rather than trying to tell them a story. It came much more natural to me.

The challenge for me with writing comes in creative writing mostly. I have always had this problem ever since I could remember. The idea of coming up with something from scratch does not come easily to me at all, and it often takes me a very long time to come up with an idea to springboard off of. This is one of the reasons why I’m not as developed of a writer as I feel I should be. Once I have an idea though, sometimes I have a hard time putting my thoughts onto paper in a pleasing and interesting manner for my readers. I know what I want to say, but do not know how to put it onto the page. Even though this mostly happens to me during creative writing, I occasionally have this problem with my nonfiction writing as well. Even though I know the facts that I need to convey, I sometimes have a hard time putting