Questionable Quality
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Found on the premises of Johnson-McFarlane and Centennial Halls are what
are supposed to be “convenience” stores. These convenience stores make
their busin...
16 years ago
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Reflecting on your writing and revision process
As you turn the final draft of your literacy event narrative in today, please reflect on your writing and revision process. How did your narrative evolve from your first draft to your final submission? What feedback from your peers did you find helpful and respond to? What writing exercises or class discussion helped you think about this assignment differently? As you revised, what specific changes did you make as a writer? Ultimately, what did you learn from this assignment about yourself, your writing, or your beliefs or attitudes about literacy?
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As I finished the final product of my essay, I thought about how it turned out. I was very pleased and thought it was one of my more powerful pieces, almost as strong as the piece that I wrote about. From my first copy to my final, I changed a good amount of description and made it much more visible to the reader. I also added in a few small details and memories to help the reader feel the passion that I had felt towards my grandfather. Most of these changes were discovered through my peers as they read my papers and gave me some feedback. This seemed to be the most helpful writing exercise to me as it was an opportunity to take some constructive criticism on my writing. I was happy with my rough draft from the start and felt that I had gotten lost in it when I was writing it, in a good way. Overall, I learned that as a writer, I feel like I have an ability to touch sensitive sides of the reader and can easily allow them to sympathize with a certain strength of description.
ReplyDeleteWhen we were first assigned this paper, I had no idea what I was going to write about at all. One of the hardest aspects of this assignment was choosing what to write about. I waited until the last minute before choosing what i was going to do. After i had decided what to write about i was able to write a first draft relatively quickly but I didnt think it was very good. The peer review session helped me very much and they gave me valuable information and feedback that helped me improve the paper. It was difficult for me to write this type of paper as i had never written a narrative before. Some of the class discussion about building tension was helpful for me. After the peer review session i was able to make some revisions that I thought made the paper more engaging or more interesting to the audience. My organization struggled a bit and even after revision i felt that it was still not quite right. I learned that writing a narrative is quite difficult and that it requires a lot more than just telling a story. It was very different than any other type of writing I have done before. I learned that I am not the greatest story teller in the world after doing this assignment.
ReplyDeleteCompared to my first draft of my literacy event narrative, my final was more complete and well polished. The peer review in class was very helpful because it gave me other points of view. Having somebody else read my paper helps pick up on problems I might not have seen when writing the paper. The other people that read my paper told me to provide more voice and more details for the readers to be able to understand my story more. As I reread through my literacy event narrative I was able to stand back and look at it from the reader's point of view. This helped me provide more voice where necessary. It also helped me delete sentences that were not suitable for the paper. It is important to be detailed when writing, especially for a narrative. By having this assignment, it helped me develop my narrative writing skills.
ReplyDeleteThrough the initial outlining to the revision of this narrative assignment, I found that my first draft was presenting the letters I focused on, rather than presenting the story. I found that as a great challenge, to evolve the "these are some letters and here is why they are important to me" to "one day....the end". Although I was not present in class the day of peer editing, and the email approach didn't work either, I used my roommate as a tool. She even helped answer some of the questions on the assignment sheet. She helped me see the lack of adjectives and other describing tactics I should be using, and we revised together to make it stronger. She also helped me figure out how to piece the narrative together to become a story. The most difficult task, aside from creating a story, was finding a climax in the story. To do so I re-read the letters and found the most valued letter and right then and there I didn't need to search for the "ah-hah" point, I witnessed it. I learned that to be a stronger writer I must apply extra adjectives to create a bolder, more illustrated experience for the reader.
ReplyDeleteMy writing and revision process:
ReplyDeleteSurprisingly, I felt my revision process went quite well and with ease. My peer editors gave me great advice that allowed me to easily identify my mistakes and weak points in my narrative. I made changes such as making names more clear, and added much more description of the setting. I think our brainstorming day where we discussed what makes a good narrative really helped my piece. This assignment showed me that I can be given any topic, and turn it into a successful story. I enjoyed this writing assignment because it brought back great memories and nostalgia from my event.
I started this assignment thinking about which pieces of writing especially moved me. I thought of novels that I had read in the past both for pleasure and for school. Then I thought of a book that my mother had given me for my nineteenth birthday, a book of sentimental poems and other pieces having to do with the mother-daughter relationship. I thought of writing about that book and the poems in it, but then my focus turned on the meaning behind the poems—a symbol of the bond between me and my mother. Finally, I thought of a speech about my mother that I wrote last quarter about my mother and I realized how important that speech was for me as I wrote it. So I found my topic for a literacy event narrative. While writing this paper, I realized that I am a perfectionist when it comes to writing, even when writing a simple first draft. After reading “Shitty First Drafts” I realized that dotting every “I” and crossing every “t” was not the way to write an efficient first draft, mainly because it takes way too much time. I also realized that I write best when I’m extremely passionate about something, when writing is no longer a burden but something I want to get out on paper for an audience to see. The peer review exercise in class help tremendously in improving my writing skills. As I revised my paper I became afraid that a certain revision—adding a sentence, taking away a sentence—would break my paper.
ReplyDeleteWriting my first narrative was miraculous, the whole narrative started with a simple idea which is about five words sentence. the idea was to write a narrative about a Day in my life, and as i go on in writing my narrative every word i write pulls another word with it like atoms pulling each other and from every sentence i finish a branch of ideas springs out like water springing out from earth.In the final draft the amount of words increased and as i read it the words did not look like words to me but rather pieces of dominoes. when i first read the first word of the narrative it was like pushing the first piece of dominoes and at the end every piece collapse and a descent picture was formed after word. when two of my classmates reviewed my narrative with me, they helped me a lot. they offered new perspectives on mu narrative that i could not see before which helped me to understand how the reader's mind work and taught me how to get the idea of my narrative through. the book of Allison Dorothy and discussions we as a class had about it changed my perspective about the narrative. i understood that a narrative is something personal rather than just a common piece of writing and that the true power of a narrative.i learned from this assignment that my writing attitude about literacy is very descriptive and that i use many visualization effect in my writing as well.
ReplyDeleteSo as everyone knows the first time you put something on paper, you might be the only one to understand what is going on. well many times that seems to be my case because i get so caught up in my own thoughts and just tend to write my mind instead of writing to an audience. my narrative took on an evolution process in many ways. I added more details and more dialogue in order to make the reader feel as if he/she were right there next to me when it happened. Things that i found helpful from the peer editing session was that we had more than one peer read our paper so i was able to get different types of ideals from different people. I liked reading Dorothy Allison's narrative before writing my own because it opened up my eyes to a new dimension of ideas and also it taught me not to be afraid to speak my mind. As i was revising, i made my narrative more detailed and gave it a little bit more of a "gut" feeling. I learned alot from my writing. Specifically, i learned that writing narratives are my favorite and i really enjoy writing them, even though i do not consider myself very talented. I also kind of re-found myself through my writing because of the events that i went through in my life.
ReplyDelete-Victor Valle
This was one writing assignment that I truly enjoyed. I love writing about this experience as well as telling my story. There were certain point that confused me, such as how to look at it from my reader’s perspective or how to make sure that my reader could understand it. I tried to not get as personal with the piece, which now looking back is a bad thing. I wish in my piece I would have drawn a little bit more emotion from within myself so that the reader could connect. Since I was not here for the peer editing, I had my roommate look at the piece and tell me her thoughts. As she read it, she told me that she could see my love for what dance as well as the pain that I had endured as a younger child. I enjoyed writing about my struggles which brought me to the point of my strengths. It allowed me to see how strong and passionate I was about this topic. It made me love dance so much more. This writing allowed me to see my strengths as a writer and to see the things that I am good at.
ReplyDeleteThrough the process of revising and editing, my paper became more focused on the precise moment that writing and/or reading made an impact in my life. Talking to Gabe and James in class, as well as going over the different aspects of good narration, made me realize that the rough draft of my paper focused too much on the background of my story and not enough on the precise impact of reading on my situation. I also realized that initailly I did not include enough information about the resolution of my conflicts, ending my rough drat as a mild cliffhanger. Usually I do not need to do too much revision to my papers or when I do I usually know exactly where or what I need to work on. This time the process was a bit more complicated, most likely due to the fact that narrative and creative writing have never beenmy forte. This assignment really challenged me as a writer, encouragin me to develop skills in description and imagery versus analysis and synthesis. I hope that as a result of this challenge my overall writing will be improved and/or greatly benefited.
ReplyDeleteWhen I began planning my narrative over how writing a poem helped me to deal with a difficult situation, I didn't know how I would structure it. At first I was going to put a lot of description into the poem itself. But I realized that maybe I should describe my relationship with poetry first. So that was a major difference between my drafts. After the peer editing response day, I noticed from their critique that maybe I didn't tie the poem itself to the essay as much as I should have. Their responses in a way let me know that I used good description of the events that occurred.
ReplyDeleteDuring the revising process, I looked for obvious grammatical errors and sentence fragments. I found parts of the narrative that could begin as a paragraph and I wrote more about how the poem helped me with the aftermath of the incident.
My essay connected with the people who read it and gave me less constructive criticism that I am used to, so I feel that I may have better writing skills as narrative writer.
Turning in my personal narrative, I felt a sense of unease. It might be that this is my first paper in the course and no matter what course or professor, the grading is always different, but I think it has more to do with my experiences in writing it. Coming up through the ranks in an AP high school, I have succeeded and found safety in the five-paragraph essay. This assignment is a step outside of that comfort zone of ‘strong thesis’, ‘topic sentence’, organization, structure, and support. I therefore approached the paper differently, more hesitantly. However, and I think more importantly, I was more daring and willing to experiment with my writing. This voyage into the unfamiliar made my peer feedback session all the more important. Although I didn’t necessarily apply what suggestions they gave, I valued their opinion because I had no previous point of reference, and they directed me in what I needed to revise and improve my paper. Editing and revising, I realized how important clarity is to a narrative, and how every word needs to help a reader understand my thoughts. I may not always be describing a secret retreat when writing, but no matter the assignment or the audience, I need to always make sure my readers easily understand what I want to tell them.
ReplyDeleteAs I revised my essay, most of the changes I made were based on the suggestions from my peers. The biggest problem is that there is not very obvious link that can connect the two events I wrote together in my story. It seems like broken bridge. Both of the two events were related to the blog; therefore, what I am supposed to do is to add one paragraph to connect both my friends to my mother through my blog. It is a great advice I got from my peers, and then I tried to revise it. Meanwhile, I happened to change more small pieces of the paragraph because every time I read it, I could have different feeling so that I change it more or less, and I believe it should look better than before. Also, I could see clear on the structure of my story as repeating read it. After this assignment, with the workshop with my peers, I would say that writing is not only words game, but also emotion record. Whatever emotion it is, write it down with true feeling, it is the best.
ReplyDelete