Dear Reader,
Writing for me has never been easy, actually I’ve dreaded it my entire life. As you read through my work you will get a better understanding of who I am as a writer. You will be able to critic my work and see my strengths and weaknesses. In this portfolio I have included three main works: the first a literacy narrative, the second a literary analysis, and the last a researched argument. With each paper I faced a different obstacle and each challenged me as a writer. The first obstacle I faced when told we had to write my literacy narrative was what could I possibly have to write about that would interest others. Deciding to write about my pen-pal mostly had to do with my brother and being able to connect the two. I didn’t start off my narrative with my brother in mind, but later on I realized it was possible to make a connection. The most difficult part of writing this essay were the details, I didn’t know where I needed to add it or where it wasn’t necessary. Also my transitions for the flashbacks I thought were clear but to those who don’t share my experience it was difficult. My greatest weakness I would say as a writer is my grammar. As I look back at my entire writing experience, I realized that I have a difficult time opening up and putting my feelings on paper, which probably was the most difficult part about writing this paper.

When it came time to write my literary analysis I faced many obstacles, but my main issue was incorporating too much plot into my paper. The thesis was another problem I faced. It couldn’t be too generalized and it couldn’t incorporate too much plot. I had to figure just the right mix between plot and generalization. The easiest part of this paper I would have to say was picking out the examples because there was so much to choose from. I didn’t want to go overboard on the quotations so I chose a few and tried explaining their importance in detail. Picking a thesis wasn’t that difficult either, since I had already done two previous mini analytical papers I just chose one and extended it adding more examples. My greatest weakness was definitely putting too much plot into my paper. As I look back at my writing experience I realized I have a difficult time analyzing something without using plot, which was definitely the most difficult part.

Writing my research paper was not an easy task. The first obstacle I faced was picking a topic that mattered and interested me to the point where I was willing to read pages of data and information. Adding to the fact that I’m a very indecisive person and that the topic had to be narrow and argumentative, did not help at all. I was dreading this paper from the very beginning cause I knew it would be the most difficult for me. The main problem I faced while writing my paper was