Personal Narrative: Overcoming Obstacles In My Writing

Since the sixth grade, the blank page of Microsoft Word has been one of my biggest obstacles in writing. Collecting my thoughts, organizing them, and then articulating them was a struggle. Over the last several years I have felt as if my writing has plateaued. Time and time again I found myself staring at the computer screen desperately trying to start my introduction paragraph. Feeling a need to change I enrolled at University of North Georgia in English Composition 1101. Within six classes, I began to understand why my writing appeared to be unorganized and difficult to follow. I was lacking structure around my thoughts and ideas. Professor Hinds explained to the class that an outline would ease our efforts in converting our ideas into words. I soon realized that a detailed and concise outline was the answer to the majority of my writing struggles. Prior to my North Georgia writing class, I jumped into my assignments by writing in stream of thoughts. As ideas came to me I put them into sentences, sometimes in random fashion. I would occasionally jot down a few main points I wished to include, but I did not go through a preparation process. What I have learned is that constructing an outline helps me brainstorm and organize my thoughts into

This time my challenge was to compare and contrast Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” and Barack Obama’s “A More Perfect Union”. Weeks before I started typing my paper, I decided to start taking notes on the two speeches and compare their main points and styles. Next, I built my outline to organize my ideas into a structure that included a thesis statement, introduction, reason, and conclusion. My thesis statement acted as a guide for my supporting explanations and examples that were clear for the reader to understand. Rather than painstakingly trying to pull words out of thin air, I was able to easily plan what should come