MY WRITING JOURNEY

Hello!

It's me.

Aya.
(blog post opener not to be confused with the Adele song)

Obviously this is my blog, however, I do not class myself as a blogger. Well, not yet. I'm a noob... I haven't been doing it for long and I am definitely not consistent. What I will say is that I really enjoy writing and attempting to blog. I may not possess the same writing sophisticato as say, Shakespeare, but I know how to string my words together (SELF HI FIVE!). Let me tell you, when I was a young lass, I never would have dreamed of writing for pleasure. One, because I found the concept boring and two, I couldn't write to save my life.

To give you a bit more of an understanding as to how far I have come, let's go back to my primary school and high school days. My writing was horrible. My grammar was shocking. Remember Ralph from The Simpsons? Well, I always felt like him in the episode where he says, "Me fail English, that's unpossible!" I definitely didn't fail English, I'm just saying that my spirit animal was Ralph Wiggum. I struggled to construct sentences that actually made sense. My mother used to be an English teacher, my dad used to write children's poems/mini books (I think? I should know this) and my sister has a journalism (and law) degree. For some reason, the writer genes skipped me.

Throughout high school, I would get either one of parents or my sister to help me edit my assignments. Want to hear some embarrassing?  I would have these massive tantrums when my "editor" would say things along the lines of, "This is shocking...re-read what you've written, fix it up and then ask me to help you edit." But, once a sentence was written, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to re-write it! I would sit at the computer or roll around on the floor absolutely balling my eyes out! I told you it was embarrassing. I wish I had video evidence just to further prove how embarrassing it was. By the way, it was not like my results were shocking at school. I would get Bs or B- in English, but I doubt I would have gotten those results if I didn't have my army of "editors". Unfortunately, my story gets worse.

I remember in high school, I used to have to go to an ESL or English as a second language class. This makes absolutely no sense, because English IS my first language. Even though I am half Russian and I learnt how to (poorly) speak Russian, I still heard English about 95% of the time. English was definitely my first language and yet, I had to be in this particular class. My grammar was that bad. I only stayed in this class for a few weeks. I found it pointless and ineffective. The ESL teacher would rewrite chunks of my assignments in front of me without asking what I thought about the adjustments or even educating me on how to edit my own work. I mean, how was this approach supposed to help me? So I said Bye Felicia and it was back to the drawing board.

It was after this ESL experience that mum began to read to me at night. Apparently, hearing someone read out aloud every day can assist in improving one's grammar. I guess it has something to do with being able to process how a grammatically correct sentence should sound. So, that's what mum and I started to do. From memory, this only lasted a few months to a year. We would read the Harry Potter books and my absolute favourite book, Mao's Last Dancer. I didn't always enjoy it and at times, I even tried to avoid it happening by pretending to be asleep. I mean, I was a teenager, how embarrassing, my mum reading to me at night before I went to sleep. Admittedly, this approach definitely improved my grammar. I left school with English results sitting at an A-. Congrats Aya, your writing improved! But the story doesn't quite stop there.

During my early years at university (note: I did not start uni until I was 20), my writing slightly improved after high school, but all in all, it remained at the same level. It took me a few years to get to the level I am at today. Ultimately, I think it came down to maturity and just an "aha moment" of wow, that's how you write! Once that "aha moment" hit, writing became easier. Don't get me wrong, I still struggle from time to time and I sometimes still need guidance on how to phrase certain sentences. I imagine that as you read this post, you are definitely not thinking that I should become an English teacher or that I should write a novel. But for me, I've come along way and the fact that I can just sit, write and post this online is a huge personal accomplishment. You know what, I deserve another self hi five!

Don't worry Ralph Wiggum, you is still me animal of spirit. Me love you!

Until next time.

xx