A Brief History of Writing: The Devin Prior Story

I learned how to write sometime before kindergarten. It began with the ABC's and grew to words, then sentences and evolved to forming complex sentences. In the first grade I had to write a weekly paragraph of what I did that week or what I had planned on doing. Soon those paragraphs turned into pages and eventually into papers. Throughout elementary school and most of middle school a standard paper was a basic five paragraph format. My writing really developed in seventh and eighth grade when in order to receive an A we had to write two more of whatever was required (i.e. if there was a five paragraph paper due we needed to have seven in order to receive the A otherwise we would get a C for doing the average work). Each semester we were assigned five papers to write, each one on a different topic and a different genre. Writing all of those papers and having them edited by my teacher really showed me what I needed to do in order to improve my writing. Unfortunately in high school I did not give as much attention to my writing as I would have liked to. There were not many assignments that involved writing in the classes that I selected and were placed in and if there was, the assignment was usually a basic research or informational paper that required zero creativity which I found to be quite boring. I always tried to add in my own style for these informational papers which unfortunately usually caused a deduction in my grade. My favorite style of writing is not having one. Having a free flow of thoughts scratched out onto a piece of paper, writing whatever is on your mind, creating a reality that exists solely in your head and describing the beauty or horribleness of that world through the use of your words making the reader explore your inner thoughts; That, to me, is the best type of writing. A true expression of what the writer is thinking. Because when you pick up a pen and paper and just sit down and begin to write whatever comes to your mind that is the truest form of writing.