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Writing Is An Activity That Builds On Success by Aaron Edwards
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Writing Is An Activity That Builds On Success |
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Education
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Early in my teaching career, I realized that writing success breeds a desire to write more. As with most endeavors, we continue to do and enjoy those activities that we excel at. I used to teach composition, the dreaded and required English course for lower division college students. My students would freely admit on the first day of class that they hated to write. I am pleased to say that by the end of the course, many came up to me privately and admitted that writing was not so bad. I even had a student choose a major (history) with a lot of writing because she had overcome her dislike for the activity. I was pleased and astonished. That was one reason I taught. Listening to their experiences with writing before my class, invariably I heard tales of papers marked with red ink - like a bleeding corpse - and pain at their valiant yet unsuccessful attempts at writing. I saw that part of my job as a writing professor was to encourage these "failed" writers, to let them feel success with their writing, so that they could feel good about themselves as writers. I sympathized with my students because I, too, had suffered from lack of confidence as a writer for most of my career. I wrote and self-published my first book in 1980. Several other books followed with some success, but I never felt I was "a writer." Then a small publisher (Children's Book Insider in Colorado) approached me to publish my books, rewritten to their specifications. It was after that memorable phone call (yes, I still remember standing in my small, apartment kitchen talking to them, and that was in 1993) that I finally felt I could succeed as a writer. This single request boosted my confidence enormously. And then a traditional publisher (NTC Contemporary Publishing) asked me to write a composition textbook. I remember standing in my doorway, on my way in from the mailbox, reading that wonderful letter. I do not remember if I cried (probably did), but that moment was the moment I knew I was a writer. That was 19 years after I published my first book. That is a long time to find confidence as a writer, but I eventually did. Of course, during those years, I would stop writing for years out of discouragement. Then the itch would start up, and I would have to write again. So I have a checkerboard career as a writer, at least the first 20 years or so. My baby steps took a long time because each time I would get a rejection, even an insignificant one, I would see the rejection as a sign that I was not supposed to be writing that genre or type. So I skipped around the writing map a lot, trying different types of writing, nonfiction and fiction, before I accepted the idea that I preferred to write books more than articles, and screenplays more than novels. From my own experiences and those of my students, I have found that success with writing breeds a desire to do more writing, which leads to often more success. And it leads to more enjoyment of the process of writing. It is a delightful cycle. So in a word, writing is an activity that builds on success. custom writings
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