Let's Get Personal!

FOR ENGLAND!

This month, I submitted a personal essay/narrative for a writing contest because, England don't come cheap and  I wanted to challenge myself in a new writing style. And I learned a lot from this experience! My topic was pretty open and vague: "Applied Christianity in daily living."
I've flirted with doing this essay contest since last semester and planned on doing it over Christmas Break, but let's be real, Christmas break was all about family, friends, and taking a reprieve from everything. After coming back from Christmas break, I wrote down this essay on every weekly to do list, and, in true procrastinator fashion, never did anything till I had 3 days to go. Last semester, I read this awesome BYU devotional speech about fear and faith, and it changed my perspective on life. So I knew I wanted to write something about changing my fear to faith, but I wasn't sure how to go about it. In my manic process of speed writing, I learned a lot about personal essays:

Writing: to Love or to Hate?

(Public Domain) The Bonfire of Hatred and Fear

Once upon a time in third grade, I found writing fun. My teacher made sure we all had the traditional wide-ruled, black& white composition notebooks, and gave us fun and creative prompts. Once a week we would all share what we wrote. I liked the freedom of it. I didn't have to worry about intros, conclusions and passive voice.  My teacher eventually taught us the standard 5 paragraph style to prepare for the essay test, but I didn't feel the pressure then.


By the time I got to high school, my love of writing warped. And by warped I mean my grade-driven panic and tendency to over think nearly strangled it to death and then lit it on fire as an inauguration of hatred and fear.