A Writer Is A Reader Foremost

For the first time, she is taking the reading seriously, with the fear of failure lingering over her head commits to reading these chapters. She sits down on her floor and sets up her folding lap desk, opens up her computer, and just stares at the lock screen of her MacBook. After about five minutes of trying to get herself to get the reading started she finally opens up the textbook. She opens her phone with the intention of turning on white noise but ends up answering her friends and scrolls on Instagram for a bit. It's another ten minutes before she even begins reading. She tries reading for some time but realizes at the end of each page that she hasn't retained any of the information she just read because as she was reading she was thinking about entirely different topics. As she's reading about the cells she is thinking about what happened that day at work and when it comes to genetics the only thing in her brain is what she is going to do at the gym that day. It's exhausting and frustrating that she can't focus. She shuts her laptop out of frustration, opens her phone, and there she goes, back to mindless scrolling and learns nothing. 

- breaking things down into smaller sections can be beneficial so the task doesn't seem so large 

- go in with a set plan of exactly what I want to accomplish

- set timers for how long

 I want to be doing a task and then put my phone across the room 

-when the timer goes off set a timer for your break time and reward yourself for finishing a task

Reading as a writer he realizes is important because it gives you influence and it helps you find your own voice at the end of it. It is important to analyze the way that other people write in order to learn and grow your own writing style. If you are going to be a successful writer yourself, you need to find the style that works for you and the easiest way to do that is to explore a plethora of styles by diving into and reading them. If something isn't your strong suit, you should read the works of someone who is extremely good at that thing. Eventually, you become familiar with it and you emulate it in your own way without even realizing it. 

To me, being a slow reader means not rushing through what you are reading and really taking the time to understand and analyze what is being said instead of just reading to hear what they are saying. This will apply to what we do in class because the things we are reading have meaning behind them. By reading quickly just to get the concept of what is going on in the essay, the entire purpose, theme, and meaning will get lost. By being the slowest reader and taking the time to analyze the text you will be able to reflect on what you read easier and in more depth, therefore giving you writing more meaning. Reading as a writer will also be important with the things we do in class. To have high quality writing you will have to both be the slowest reader, to understand what is being read, and read as a writer to realize the style in which what you are reading is being written, so you can broaden your horizons of the styles of which you yourself might write. 

Sitting down, staring at a blank doc, she rolls her eyes because she knows that starting is the absolute hardest part. She looks around at her messy room looking for some sort of excuse to not do this writing, she can’t find one so unwillingly she begins. She types the first sentence, reads it, hates it, and tries again. She does this probably four times before she is finally happy with it. From there she gets into a grove and the words start flowing onto the page all of the sudden she hears her phone go off with a phone call and all of the momentum she had is gone and will never be back to the way it was. 

- find a quiet space without any possible distractions

- Power off my phone completely to not lose momentum 

- If I stop writing have a specific goal to complete when I start again to get back into a rhythm 

The first tip that I think is the most important is to write the body first, the introduction second, and the conclusion last. For me, starting is the hardest part and I put so much pressure to write a perfect thesis, to sum up an essay that I haven’t written yet. By doing this after I have the body written, I will find myself not only being able to write a better 

thesis but also feeling like I have more freedom when writing my body. After I write my thesis I often find myself feeling constricted when writing the body because I have to follow my thesis perfectly. If I write the thesis after, then I can write whatever feels natural in the body paragraphs and feel like I have the freedom to change my mind. The other tip that to me is the most important was to just start by writing five original sentences. I feel like I put so much pressure on myself to format everything perfectly, and have all of my content ready and laid out. By doing that I become extremely overwhelmed and it takes any enjoyment of writing right out of it. By just starting with the topic sentences of each paragraph I have something specific and small to stick to and build upon.