This week's project started when I looked at our bookcase full of mis-matched, unlabeled binders and couldn't take it anymore. I cleaned out the binders, throwing away anything I didn't want or need to keep anymore, then typed up spine labels for them (I found the easiest way to make them was to create a table in Word. I love tables!)
While I still don't love the binders out for the world to see and would rather have them tucked out of sight, at least now they look organized. Sorry, I forgot to take a before shot.
De-cluttering took some of my binders from 3-inches to 1-inch. Wahoo!
My favorite part of the project was looking through old things I'd saved. I had an English portfolio stuffed with papers and stories I'd written from Jr. High into college. I spent an entire day reading everything in it. Some papers were terrible, others weren't so bad. I found that I am great at descriptive writing, good at character sketches, mediocre at persuasive writing, and horrible at poetry.Sadly, I find that I still haven't outgrown my over-use of filler words such as "really, like, very, so, just, got . . ." I'm going to start working on that. I also couldn't stay in the same tense for the life of me!
A few Jr. High gems included an original story called "The Care Bears Save Santa". (My teacher thought it should be made into a short holiday cartoon - and it probably could be). There was also a totally plagiarized story that my grandma actually wrote, and I just embellished. I'll have to repent of that now that I know better!
I am grateful that we had an English department that made the subject more fun. In high school I took English classes with the titles and subjects of "Ghosts in Literature", "Disney Movies", "History of Film", "The Bronte Sisters" and "Jane Austen". I had forgotten how much fun writing could be, and I hope to try my hand at it some more.
