Personal Experience: Strategies For Generating Ideas

This weeks assigned reading gave me insight to more strategies, as well as recalling an experience. Last week, I talked about how I needed to moreso improve my level of writing to meet the standards of college level. After this week, I think I am ready to contend for a college level paper using all my resources from the textbook given.

Chapter 4 of The Bedford Guide for College Writers alluded to “Recalling an Experience”, as Chapter 19 discussed “Strategies for Generating Ideas”. Both chapters had important points of the topic, and gave advice on what to do when writing. Through my education, writing from an experience has probably been my favorite topic. The reason being, is because we have many experiences lodged in our brains, we just have to pull them out, and put them in

“Writing from recall is writing from memory, a writer’s richest - and handiest - resource.” (pg.47) Although writing from recall might be easy, the most difficult challenge from this topic is to “focus on just one main idea, and not include unnecessary details.” (pg.54) Finding a memory might be harder than it seems. For example, I do not remember the last time I have been in a swimming pool. Maybe, if I were to go to a swimming pool, it will bring feedback of memories to highlight when the last time I swam was. On page 55 of Chapter 4, under the Generating Ideas topic, the writer talks about how when “you are busy doing something else - observing the scene around you, talking with someone, reading about someone else’s experience - the activity can trigger a recollection.” Being in a place which has the same characteristics of your experience can lead towards recalling more memories. This chapter would be extremely helpful for my upcoming major assignment. I plan on utilizing this chapter to help recall experiences from my childhood, when I learned how to read and write. Chapter 19 was not so heavy on a