An Evaluation of Yourself as a Writer, Essay Example

I have always enjoyed writing, but I recognize that it’s a skill that can always be improved.  This course has been helpful in giving me a structured setting in which to learn new writing skills and practice the ones that I already possessed.  I feel that I am a stronger writer, researcher, and editor after having taken this course.

I have grown as a writer since beginning this course, especially in the areas of research and editing.  Although I enjoy writing for my own personal pleasure, these skills have not always translated well into academic writing.  I have a tendency to get overwhelmed with the research process.  I often find it difficult to choose between a variety of sources so as to create the strongest possible argument.  The structure of this course and its assignments helped me to organize my time in a way that allowed me not to rush through the research process.   I now feel more confident in my research abilities and writing skills, and I feel that this course has taught me things that will help me to succeed in my future academic and professional pursuits.

I believe that my biggest strength as a writer is the creative approach that I bring to most of my academic assignments.  This is a helpful skill as it allows me to brainstorm about possible approaches to take when completing projects.  As well, my own creative interests allow me to enjoy writing even about mundane subjects, which makes the completion of my school assignments much less difficult than it would be if I didn’t like to write.  My biggest weakness as a writer, however, stems from the enthusiasm I bring to the craft.  While I like writing new things and thinking about new ideas, I tend to lose steam when it comes to editing and proofreading.  This means that my work can lose some of its effectiveness because it doesn’t necessarily look as polished and complete as it could.  I’ve tried to improve on this weakness in this course by going through several drafts before handing in assignments.  I’ve also stopped the practice of editing and proofreading on the computer screen.  Instead, I now print out hard copies of my assignments and go through them with a red pen, sometimes reading parts out loud so that I might hear any errors in grammar, syntax, or structure.

I intend to continue my personal writing throughout my academic career.  This will help me to remain enthusiastic about the writing process, while helping me to practice the editing and research skills that I’ve learned in this course.  Prior to taking this course, I wasn’t very good at using the online research databases, but I feel much more confident in my ability to navigate such sites to find the information I need.  I will utilize these databases much more in future courses now that understand how to structure my searches and choose between a variety of research sources.  This will help to strengthen my arguments in future writing exercises by allowing me to obtain good sources to help back up my claims.

Academic and creative writing don’t have to exist in two separate worlds.  I strongly believe that this course has helped to develop my writing skills in a way that will improve the fiction and poetry that I may write in the future.  As well, I have become a much more diligent editor of my own work, a skill that will be valuable for my academic, professional, and personal writings.  I’m glad that I took this course, especially because it reminded me that I need to pay attention to all aspects of my writing, not just the parts I enjoy, so that I might produce well-researched, polished work that can both inform and entertain my readers.