A Writer is a Reader Foremost

    It is 10:00pm on a school night and Sylvia is laying in bed watching a show. She receives a text from one of her friends in her English class, asking if she remembered to do the assigned reading. To nobody's surprise, she forgot. Slowly, she sits up from her lying position and grabs the book from her backpack which is sitting on the floor along side her bed. She then looks at her phone and reads the time in head, she had originally wanted to be asleep by 10:30 but that was not happening anymore. Still on her phone, she turned on some instrumental jazz music for the background before she opened her book to begin reading. Lying back down, snuggled into a blanket, she reads one sentence at a time. After 5 minutes went by, she noticed she had only read two pages, and on top of that, she does not remember anything she had read. She will attempt to read more pages, but with her not remembering anything, there is no use. She eventually gives up and will read a summary on spark notes (Mr. Maltman, I apologize. You are probably disappointed). Soon after reading a summary for each chapter, she drifts into slumber. 

    While I do not always procrastinate that badly, it does happen more often than not. Even worse, if I don't procrastinate reading assignments, that probably means that I completely forgot about it in the first place. There are multiple things that I can do to help change my habits and the first thing that I would do is spread out the work load and not save it all for one night. Doing this, it will lessen the time each night that I have to read and will make it much more manageable. Something else that I can do differently is not read in my bed. I feel that doing this it will allow me to focus better and not get distracted by sleeping or going on my phone. Adding on to my phone, turning it off or putting it in a different room could help me not get distracted. While I am aware of these changes, the hardest part is actually carrying it out. 

    Once Benjamin begins to "read as a writer", he begins to understand the story better than he ever had before. Slowing down and taking the time to analyze every sentence was the best thing he was able to do for his career and life. Before he was too rushed and this seemed to cause him anxiety which got in the way of his everyday life. When he looked into every sentence, he also was able to catch more about what the author was doing with the sentence. Overall, he seemed to understand what he was reading so much better than before and doing this also allowed him to become a better author himself. 

    Being the "slowest reader" means you take the time you need to fully understand the book you are reading. I would imagine this would take weeks, as you might have to read the story more than once to fully get the picture. For me, I think if I become a "slow reader" and "start reading as a writer" I will understand writing better and will gather so much more information than before. This is a good step for me and being able to learn more about what authors write the way they do and what it actually means. By taking the time to slow down I will get so much more out of what I am reading then what I would normally get by skimming and just reading to finish the book. 

    Once Sylvia got home, she sat down on her couch and opened her computer. It is a Friday night and she just wants to get her writing assignment out of the way so she does not having any homework over the weekend. She takes out her AirPod's, puts them into her ears, and then turns on some instrumental jazz music. At first, she is spitting out sentences left and right. However it does not take long before she starts to slow down and loose her train of thought. She feels confident about what she has written so far but as she rereads it, she notices red squiggly lines under many words and it does not have the best flow. Letting out a big sigh, she finds herself in a rut. After fixing her mistakes, she closes her Chromebook and does not open it again until Sunday. Again, like on Friday, she has a good run of getting sentences down. This finishes up the writing assignment. After giving it a final proof-read, she knows it was rushed and not well thought through, but she does not care enough to take the time and fix it. She hits submit, closes her Chromebook, and goes on with her Sunday night. 

    This blog was very helpful to read as I normally struggle writing essays. It gave me many ways to change my perspective on writing assignments and making them more enjoyable for myself. The tip that stood out the most to me was the idea of writing down five original sentences. Doing this would give me a good base of what my paragraphs should revolve around instead of trying to come up with that on the spot. Something else that stood out to me was being "source heavy." Using sources is something that many teachers require you to do while writing essays, yet I do not seem to use it enough to my advantage. In my opinion, it feels wrong taking their words and thoughts even after giving proper credit. However, I realize that it's part of writing essays and I am allowed to use their words. Finally, the last thing I know I will be using in upcoming college assignments is not writing the introduction first. I have noticed that with my high school writing, my introducing is commonly the worst graded. Knowing that, I will try not to write my interaction paragraph first. Overall, these tips were very helpful and will be something I keep in the back of my mind for the future