Personal Narrative: My Love For Writing

My love for writing is similar to my love of swimming. I put all my love and sweat into writing as well as into swimming back and forth down the lanes in the pool. Some days, I feel like a fish swishing through the water, while other days I feel like a dense blob that is about to drown. However, no matter how productive my swim or writing is, when I get out of the pool, I am physically at the same place as I started and I feel that I have not made much progress. However, once I look back at my work, I see how much stronger I have become and the skills and techniques I have developed.

This comparison is especially true with this essay. I have been working on this essay since my senior year of high school. I have been going back and forth on this essay, constantly transforming it throughout the years. This essay was originally written to be my personal statement for applying to colleges and then slowly transformed into an essay written for personal pleasure, and then ultimately developed into a place driven essay I needed to write for an exposition class.
It is extremely interested in seeing how this essay has morphed throughout the five years that I have been working on it.
Just content-wise alone it has greatly changed. The original draft (in which I used for the college admissions process) was about the spirituality I obtained at my original trek up the Crow’s Nest. Eventually, I wanted to redevelop this essay and I labeled it the Nesting Cycle. This essay explored the role of me as a camper transitioning into a role of leadership. In this newest draft, Fed By Offspring, I continue this narrative but also explore the ideas of how part of being a mature leader is also standing down and letting new younger leaders take control—or do the feeding in this
metaphor.

It is also really amusing to see how my writing skills and techniques have drastically improved due to constant practice. In the earlier draft for college admission, it was very dry and did not evoke much sense of imagery. In my second draft, the imagery increased and it had a greater message and became more of a coming of age story. In the newest draft, I turned the essay up on its head, totally changing the format, “showing” the imagery more than “telling” it.

In a way, it is like the newest draft I wrote is a totally different narrative. Everything got re-written and the format totally changed. Some of my favorite changes I made in the essay were creating a braided narrative. I included relevant facts about the American Crow life cycle, in which I believe beautifully, aligns with my development of a person and leader. I start off as a “squawking chick” as I annoyingly complain and then begin to nest new chicks, which ultimately take control and help me (or “feed me”) with raising the youngest batch of chicks. I have also included much more vivid imagery, the italicized thoughts of me during the scene, and a more matured and removed view of the events that took place during each scene.

Now, I will never be an Olympic swimmer or a Pulitzer Prize writer. However, I do both things for pure and for my mental and physical health. As I keep practicing, I hope to keep swimming on, improving all of my strokes.