Julia R. Smith

  As a Writer, I'm what you could call a strict traditionalist. Before I began the Sweetland Minor in Writing, I wrote essays for school and experimented with fiction for fun. When I wanted to read someone else’s writing, I turned toward my ever-growing collection of books. This semester, I learned that writing involves many more components than just words and how you arrange them on a page. Still, going beyond the narrow types of writing that I knew scared me. It sounded like work and it sounded like abandoning what I love doing best: arranging words on a page.

         Although I’m an organized, structured person with a strict day-to-day schedule, I am not an organized writer. I don’t want to know where my project is going; I want to discover it. I believe in the tangibility of words on a page, their lasting power and ability to swirl around in a maze of thought and create a unique, individual image of their own. As I reflect back on my experience in the Gateway course to the Minor in Writing and think about all of the different types of writing I’ve learned to wrap my head around, I realize that it doesn’t matter that I’m not yet comfortable trying out some of these mediums for myself. With enough practice, someday I will be. For now, I’ll let my ideas pour forth in their best possible light, the medium that makes my mind race and my fingers fly desperately across the keyboard: the indestructible, traditional, essay.