The Art of Writing by Erika

The Art of Writing by Erika - August 2016 Scholarship Essay

Of all places in the world, the most zealously treasured among them are libraries. Within their labyrinthine shelves they hold the greatest gift mankind can possess: knowledge in the form of books. Whether they’re ancient texts or contemporary works, they hold within them the foundation of our history, culture, and amusement. Fables, poems, novels, biographies, letters and memoirs, records- they hold anything and everything we need to understand our own species. Each of these bound paper works contain information on past members of society, or something of merit to add to history, or something simply created from imagination for the enjoyment of others. Breaking it down further, none of this would be possible if there wasn’t a written language to base these scripts off of. Thanks to classes like Language Arts and Composition and Literature classes, such practices are preserved to introduce other writers into the fold.

For the first half of high school, I struggled to create a simple essay in a timely fashion. My style lacked coordination, and the writing in general was pretty poor. Often, I’d find myself struggling trying to come up with ideas for essays, enduring hours of infuriating episodes of creator’s blocks. I despised popular or recognized literary works like Shakespeare’s _Romeo and Juliet_ or Homer’s _The Odyssey_, since I lacked the desire to read something if it wasn’t neoteric to my tastes; hence the reason I struggled to understand or actually analyze such works and appreciate them. I kept this up until about my junior year, when I took AP English Language and Composition. Since it was one of my first AP classes, I found it difficult to adjust to, but over time I realized that the reason I didn’t enjoy the classic works or properly write essays was because I didn’t apply myself in the right way. After adapting to my teacher’s style of tutelage, I eventually learned new tricks to write better essays, and actually began to study the books and try to analyze every little detail to find the underlying meaning hidden within the text.

Over time I found a huge improvement, as I could easily pick out details once hidden to me, and could follow a page of Shakespeare’s writing without getting a headache right off the bat. I devoured works like Mary Shelley’s _Frankenstein_ and Braham Stoker’s _Dracula_, finding enjoyment in the older style of writing. My vocabulary grew, and my writing flowed better as I developed enhanced writing habits and transitions in my essays. What used to take me hours to write a paper eventually was cut down to anywhere between 40 minutes to an hour and a half. Although I didn’t see results immediately after starting the class, I still found the improvements going into my senior year. By then my writing came easily, and I didn’t have to necessarily sit there brainstorming ideas in a thought web or outline before writing. Instead, I could simply read a piece, analyze and pick it apart, then take my evidence and develop a well-written essay in the span of an hour. Over time, I picked up on allusions to different works and beliefs in the writings I analyzed, and more easily identified figurative language references or symbols and themes in the writing. I learned the different kinds of irony, from dramatic to verbal, and the setup of Ancient Greek plays, which later influenced other styles of playwrights and literary works in history. After taking the class, my writing style not only improved, but my overall analytical process improved as well. My problem-solving skills were sharpened, as I could write more eloquent essays for all of my classes, while still staying on topic and presenting a thorough paper on the subject assigned to me.

As a student, I became better-rounded in my studies, and enjoyed reading even more. As my writing skills matured, so did my tolerance to sit there and read texts of history or science and other nonfiction works instead of the usual fictional stories. I was always a bookworm to begin with, but after my junior year of English, I grew to view words as even more intoxicating and captivating to the mind’s eye than before. Libraries became my favorite haunt as I devoured book after book, and the alluring temptation of reading proved more difficult to abstain from over time. Nearly every week I had a new book that I was reading, whether it was in class or form the library, and even finished reading class assignments weeks in advance. Overall, my English course created a bottomless pit of a monster that refused to read just for fun, but for knowledge as I learned new styles and techniques of writing.