Reflection

 The Fluency Blog project I have been working on the last few weeks has been a bit challenging, but in the long run it seems to have helped me. The biggest challenge for me was finding things to write about. Most of my blog posts were freewrites, and they were a bit challenging for me when I first began writing them. I could never seem to find a topic for my freewrites when I began them, but once I started writing I always latched onto an idea that I was able to expand on and write a bit about. Doing this blog project helped me reflect a bit on things that were happening to me in my life or my other classes, and helped me get some thoughts down on paper and form new thoughts as I went along. My ability to translate my thoughts into understandable writing improved with this assignment.
  I did experience a little trouble at first with trying not to write about the same thing all the time. I always seemed to have the same thoughts when I sat down to write, and I was always worried that I was beginning to sound redundant. I would begin writing, and while many of my posts had similar introductions, I always seemed to branch out after a few lines and delve into whatever topic came to my mind. Once I opened up and began writing ideas just seemed to come to me, and once I got started on one I was able to take it and run with it. Once I stopped trying to force myself to use words and phrases I thought were better I was able to relax a little and just write. It became easier the more I wrote and I ended up writing about things that weren't even close to what I was thinking about when I began writing.
 This assignment wasn't something I was looking forward to when I started because I had no idea how I was going to find enough ideas to write about something new each day, but once I got started I found that I am more creative than I expected. I found I was actually able to write a paragraph or two about topics I wouldn't have expected to be able to get three sentences out of. One thing I enjoyed about this assignment was getting to write about things that were going on when I wrote the post. It allowed me to reflect on my thoughts and what was happening in my life, or think about the reasons for the thoughts or opinions I was writing about.
  This assignment has raised my expectations for my own writing in the future, and having a better idea of what I'm capable of will help me push myself when I'm writing. I will hold myself to a higher standard now and I have gained confidence in my writing abilities. I am more creative than I thought. I will use freewrites as a brainstorming tool in the future because they help me develop my ideas as well as gain new ones. As little as I wanted to begin this assignment, it really has helped me develop as a writer and become more creative.
-Ellie Lane