FINAL

        Sharmaine Caoile

Period 4

January 5, 2012

Fear of Writing

Prompt: · Blogging: How has blogging as a writing medium changed the way you write, think, or think about writing?
        Imagine you hate working out. Every day you drag yourself to the gym. You grumble as you hit the treadmill, you sweat your pants, your flab is jiggling and you think everyone is staring at you as you bench press 20 lbs while they all go for a hundred. That's exactly how I feel about writing! I have developed a fear of writing which I consider cancer for high school students.  Before even I start writing an essay I fear that my teacher will not like it, if I can finish it, if I can even start and more negative thoughts. Writing brings up all my issues: self doubts, criticism, and humiliation. However, blogging has helped me change the way I think about writing and it helped me overcome my fear of writing.
       At first, When Mr. Sutherland told our class we have to write 3 blog posts every week, I told myself that I am not going to do it and I thought about switching out of his class. Writing for everyone in my class to read is obviously something I don't want to do. Just the thought of how many people can read my writing makes me sick. It really takes up too much of my time because I often do not know what to write about or how to expand on the thoughts that I have already written down. Sometimes it would take me more than a day to complete a one and a half page of essay.  I also had some difficulty coming up with topics and once I do think of a topic, I don't write it right away. Instead I take a lot of time, often several days thinking and thinking about what I’m going to say which is why three blog posts a week was too difficult. I was really skeptical about blogging and I was not sure how it's going to help with English language so I ended up not doing it for a couple of weeks. Avoiding my fear of writing was my biggest problem. I would rather avoid the world than deal with the thoughts and bad feelings that drive me crazy.
        However, after a couple of weeks, I decided to give it a try. I needed to get my but in gear and just do it or else I would fail the class and I would never want that to happen. I did not even know what to write about. After few minutes of thinking and torturing my brain I realized that I was just thinking too hard. I tried not to worry that I might not have brilliant thoughts to work on and just wrote down how I feel at the moment. I wrote about how I feel about my senior year. I just basically wrote down what was on my mind and I finally started writing. Clicking the publish button for the first time was probably one of my biggest achievement throughout the semester. I mean I never thought that I would even share my writing with anyone but my teacher because I am too self conscious. Also, English is my second language and I am still learning. I just don’t have the guts to share my writing piece with anyone.
         I never thought blogging would change the way I think. Writing on the computer made it easier for me put my thoughts into better sentences that actually make sense. I can easily edit my work with the help of delete button. The fact that blogging is on the computer and everyone can read my writing piece made me really think about what I’m going to write and how am I going to write it. Getting feed backs and commenting on other people’s work also helped a lot. Sometimes it is better to see what others are writing after you.  It’s surprising how people have tons of different ideas in one subject and I can actually learn from them. Seeing others people's work helped me expand my vocabulary and structure better sentences. It is really surprising how blogging changed the way I think about sharing my writing piece with my peers and the entire world. Thanks to Mr. Sutherland!
     Now I see it as a way to improve my writing skills and a way to gain confidence in my writing ability. I learned that when you are writing you just have to be yourself and that would be hard to do if you are constantly trying to impress people. What I'm trying to say is don't be too self conscious and self critical when you are writing. I mean one bad article won’t be the end of the world.It's all about practice and gaining experience. Free yourself from the limitations of what people expect. Just because it’s difficult does not make it impossible and just because you have had trouble in the past does not guarantee that this will be a life long trend. I cannot say that I have become a good writer over the semester but I could say that I have gained confidence in writing and I overcome the fear of writing.