Drafting my LA

I want to echo what Jennifer said and compliment Lauren on her LA as well. It was very well written and moving.

I have looked at the questions meant for our week 2 blog assignment and am feeling a bit overwhelmed by all this drafting. My mentality is and has been similar to Jennifer's on wanting to get things down perfectly the first time, so it has been a bit difficult for me to get started. But I'm going to take a stab at some of the questions just to get something down, so here goes:

The first things I remember writing are a journal when I was very young and spelling tests in school. For some reason these tests stick out in my mind probably because I made it a personal goal to get 100% on them every week. I would study hard for them and plead with family members to quiz me. My journal was filled with all kinds of things, but mostly letters to my parents who weren't around. (more on that and its effect on my reading/writing in my draft). I would also transcribe things I liked or wanted to remember, songs mostly that my mom would sing to us. I liked the physical act of writing.

In fifth grade I learned about poetic license. My teacher, Mr. Grimmett, knew how much I liked writing and encouraged me to write poetry. Either that or I wrote a poem for him that he liked and praised me for, I don't remember. But the result was a compilation of short poems I wrote using poetic license that he wanted to put together in a mini book. I remember one about an albino rhino that makes me realize how silly they were but how great a teacher he was for encouraging me.

In high school I excelled in English. It was by far my favorite subject and I had one of the best and most memorable teachers for a few Honors and AP classes. Mrs. Lynch was a sophisticated, sharply dressed woman with amazing posture. She looked like a dancer being tall and fluid in movement. She would have us sit in a circle and we read things like MacBeth and Hamlet, each of us having turns in different roles. She encouraged us to read theatrically which helped me learn the material better and introduced me to the world of theater.

This is already a much longer post than I anticipated so I think I'll stop here. See you all in class!