Freely Writing about my Writing

I am a writing major and a journalism minor; it is safe to say that I really enjoy writing. However, I am best at writing when it is creative. I like writing creatively for myself or with guidelines from an assignment. Assignments that give me some creative freedom are my favorite kind; they give me a clear goal, but allow me to choose how I accomplish it and by what means.

My best writing experience to date was writing a paper for Harry Potter: Texts and Contexts in the fall of 2019. This was my favorite class I have ever taken. The semester was devoted to reading the Harry Potter novels and discussing them at length. At the end of the semester, our final asssignment was to write a paper that went beyond what we talked about in class. It could be a discussion topic we had covered or not, it was up to us. I decided to write about the complicated personality of Severus Snape, mostly focusing on his “love” for Lily Potter and how that affected his life. I was given guidelines for the paper, but I was allowed to do with it what I pleased. Not to mention, it was centered around one of my favorite book series of all time.

My strengths in writing are being concise, getting my point across quickly, and being creative. I have always been good at explaining things without taking up too much time. This has been valuable when it comes to journalism, but it doesn’t help much with longer pieces.

I would like to be stronger at stretching what I have to say by using valuable information rather than what I call “fluff words,” or words that aren’t needed, but are used to drag out a paper to meet a page or word requirement.