My Personal Statement

I'd be happy if it were to be critiqued! Thanks ^_^


Writing is my one and only passion in life. From the earliest memories of my childhood I remember always having a deep fascination with characters and plots. I became interested in plays, movies, television shows, video games but it became obvious that the best medium to convey a plot is a novel. Over the years as my love for stories grew, one simple fact presented itself in my mind which I found hard to ignore. Writing encompasses anything and everything.

In essence, writing is one of the simplest things in the universe. It involves physically writing, typing or even dictating some words, and these said words get magically jumbled up in a piece of paper. We do it every day in some form of our lives; most of the time not giving the words we jot down a second thought. Most people use writing for a variety of things in our daily lives, including directions, memos, phone numbers, signatures, or perhaps even writing in the web address for a new website you heard about. One thing for certain is that writing is a definite part of our lives, and will never become out-dated.

The part of writing I find most fascinating is fiction. While it is easy to grasp the idea of writing stuff down, the mere concept of writing fiction can be a bit daunting. As a writer it is my job to create memorable characters and put them in heart wrenching situations to tug on the reader’s emotions. This is no easy task once the truth rears its ugly head: all I’m doing is putting down words on paper. Something most six year old's do these days without a problem.

What is plot and what are characters? In my opinion plot and characters are a sort of manifestation or representation of your life. With this in mind, nothing you experience in life is ever pointless. Trips to the grocery store or a boring day in math class are experiences I might have to draw on later in my life for inspiration. Even if I do not draw on these every day activities they still define who I am, so they were not pointless in the grand scheme of things.

Most readers think that characters and plot come from the authors mind. This is only partially true, as the authors mind is one hundred percent influenced by the people and places around them. I’ve decided that for better or for worse that I’d become a fiction writer so that I could report on life. In essence that’s all writers do; speculate and report on the interesting parts of life. So when I said “Writing is my one and only passion in life” at the beginning of this personal statement what I really meant was “Life is my one and only passion in life.”

Ew. You introduce several ideas and never quite finish any of them and contradict many of them. It's really quite rambly and very yucky.

That sounds mean. Let me outline your statement, paragraph by paragraph.

You start with your early memories, then mention that you think novels are the best form of writing (a point which you subsequently ignore).

Then you talk about how writing is simple, everybody does it, and that it won't become outdated.

Then you talk about fiction and say that writing is hard. Then you talk about what you want, then you say that writing is simple.

Then you talk about plot and how you think plot is just life written out.

Then you make a grammatical error (should be author's mind--notice the apostrophe), talk about how readers perceive authors and how their perceptions are wrong. And then you mention that you think writers are reporters and you want to become a reporter. Oh, and don't forget the part where you mention that this is a personal statement (I'm sure the reader of this work has no idea of that... ) and completely change your thesis around, since you can't reiterate your point because you have no point.

So!

First you have to outline this. Ask yourself, what do you really want to say? What does your audience want to read? I have no idea what the topic is about, but I am assuming that it has something to do with, "Describe your life's passion" or something to that effect.

In order to pull this off, you have to start asking yourself the basic questions:

WHO: First, who are you? When people are reading your personal statement, they are trying to figure out who you are. So answer that question. Who are you?

WHAT: What drives you? What fires up your passion?

HOW: How do you go about doing your passion?

WHERE: Where are you in this passion? Where did you start? Where are you now?

WHEN: When will you have tangible results of achievement for this passion? Do you have some achievements you've already done?

WHY: Why do you do this?


Next, before you're going to write, you MUST come up with an outline. It should look something like this:

THESIS SENTENCE: This is the thing I will try to show/prove/demonstrate!

PARAGRAPH #1 TOPIC SENTENCE: This supports my thesis in an interesting way!

PARAGRAPH #2 TOPIC SENTENCE: This supports my thesis in an interesting way that is different from #1!

PARAGRAPH #3 TOPIC SENTENCE: This supports my thesis in an interesting way that is different from #1 and #2!

CONCLUSION: This reiterates my thesis and draws all of the previous topic sentences together in a logical way!

The topic sentences should attempt to answer some of the basic questions outlined above.

So basically: don't delete this. It might prove useful. But do restart it fresh, and this time, make sure to outline it so that it makes sense and flows. You wouldn't attempt a novel without some sort of idea or outline of what is going to happen, and you can't approach an essay without any clue as to what you're writing.

Good luck, and I hope your revised personal statement gets you lots of money!