The Rookie

Justin hasn’t done as much writing in his day as he probably should have done.  He has never considered himself the creative type, so when it came to writing stories, he never had much success.  He has written his fair share of research papers and essays, but past that has not done much. 

To be straightforward, Justin has never put forth a valiant enough effort to develop his skills as a writer.  In high school, when he would get assigned a paper to write that had to be between 1000 and 1500 words, he would write 1001, and then turn in his rough draft as his completed paper. When he was assigned a research project, he would fill it with as many block quotations as possible without the teacher becoming suspicious.  This lack of effort has left him with a lot of weaknesses in writing. His main weaknesses are as follows:

• Lack of experience — Justin has never been the type to consistently keep a journal.  When he has written in his journal it has been a fairly dry outline of his life events.  He has never attempted to write a novel, or poetry, or anything else, purely for his own pleasure.   

• Ineloquent speech — Justin doesn’t talk like a first grader, but he’s definitely no Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr.  He likes simplicity, which, while not a bad thing, is usually not  one of the qualities of a great writer.  He struggles to make his writing interesting to the reader.  

• Lack of creativity — It’s hard for Justin to make up stories from scratch.  He has never had the idea for a great story just pop into his head.  Stories he tells are usually from actual events in his life, but he struggles to exaggerate them and make them more interesting than they actually are; a quality most great story tellers possess.  He’s also not 100% sure how to use semicolons.  

• Analysis — When Justin reads a books, usually he is reading it for one of two reasons.  He either wants to be entertained, or he wants to learn more about a certain topic.  When it comes to analyzing methods used by an authors, he really struggles.  

Justin’s strengths as a writer are

• He types at incredible speeds — While his actually words per minute rate has never been established, Justin feels very confident in his ability to get the words out on the paper once the idea has sprung.  He wrote this blog post SO fast.  

Justin hopes to be able to gain confidence as a writer throughout his English 295 course, so he feels like he can add more to his list of strengths.