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Final Writing Reflection

The student reflects on how their writing skills have improved over the course of the Writing 2 class. Key areas of growth include understanding genre, research methods like citation chaining, embracing "shitty first drafts", and providing more constructive peer feedback. The student now feels more confident in their writing abilities across genres and incorporating sources effectively. While still aiming to continue improving, the student recognizes meaningful development through challenges of the class.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
32 views5 pages

Final Writing Reflection

The student reflects on how their writing skills have improved over the course of the Writing 2 class. Key areas of growth include understanding genre, research methods like citation chaining, embracing "shitty first drafts", and providing more constructive peer feedback. The student now feels more confident in their writing abilities across genres and incorporating sources effectively. While still aiming to continue improving, the student recognizes meaningful development through challenges of the class.

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api-709800982
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Ramirez 1

Sophia Ramirez

Evans

Writing 2

13 December 2023

Journey Through Writing 2

As I look back at the writer I was ten weeks ago, I can clearly see that my approach to the

writing process has improved in almost every aspect. From my research process, to how I write

my first drafts, to how I give and receive feedback. I would say that the biggest change with who

I am today is the level of comfort I have with the subject which comes from an understanding of

the vocabulary associated with writing. As far as I knew when I walked in on the very first day

of class, genre meant horror, comedy, or romance when talking about movies. Or, if discussing

music, then rap, country, or pop. That was about it. Although these are examples of genre, genre

encompasses nearly every package that writing can come in. The syllabus for Writing 2 I read

that first day was its own genre, distinct from the conversation I had with my classmates right

before. Who knew? Every body of work fell into its own genre with its own set of elements and

intention. Perceiving writing through this lens has really helped me approach my own work with

closer inspection. I know what to pay attention to when reading or writing in a certain genre and

I hope to further develop this skill.

Understanding what genre really is was the key to approaching genres in my own writing.

After discussing it in class, I can now identify it in the media I consume and interact with daily. I

recall a reading by Mike Bunn titled How to Read Like a Writer that we discussed in the first

week of class. He encourages writers to look deeper into what they read; Good writers don’t just

read to absorb the information being discussed, they read to also recognize the techniques used
Ramirez 2

by the author to write the paper itself. Bunn says that we can assess the sentence structures and

tones, and possibly incorporate them into our own work. Reading this made me reflect on how I

already integrate this practice into my own reading, however, I always felt this was “cheating” in

a way. Sometimes I would make mental notes of sentence structures or good introductory hooks

to use as inspiration, but I was under the impression that I was supposed to think of my own

creative ideas instead. Now I’ve come to realize that it is a skill to be able to recognize effective

elements and use them to better your writing. I was heavily influenced by this idea when writing

my WP1. Prior to beginning, I was familiar with the basic structure and tone of gossip articles,

yet my drafts didn’t seem to capture their mood. I “studied” different gossip blogs to get a sense

of their layouts, phrases, and other elements to incorporate into my project and eventually picked

up on the kinds of wording authors use to make their work stand out within the genre. I have

become more observant of the writing I read which I think has helped me become a better writer.

Gathering sources for a paper can be the most time consuming aspect of the whole

writing process, but can also be quite entertaining. Especially for my WP2 which pulled

information from multiple sources, my research process took some time, along with trial and

error. Citation chaining was a big help to finding sources that had just enough overlap to flow

well in my discussion. After flipping through many different sources about the five-paragraph

essay, I was beginning to worry that all of their opinions were too similar and that my subject

was too specific. However, forward chaining drew the conversation further out to articles that

centered different ideas. At one point, I was even reading about medieval teaching techniques.

Despite having different main ideas, every article I found through citation chaining was linked

back to the five-paragraph essay one way or another. I limited my letter to five sources so I could

have space to explain each, but the conversation kept going. As I mentioned in my WP2
Ramirez 3

reflection, citation chaining connected me to articles that I otherwise wouldn’t have found by just

using the key words “five-paragraph essay.” It’s a tool I will definitely be using for future

research assignments.

The most challenging part of writing has always been actually starting to write. Even

with extensive preparation, most of my attempts at completing a writing assignment have begun

by staring at a blank screen with hundreds of sentence ideas running through my head, yet none

good enough to be converted to text. I would want my end product to be good, but I could never

fathom my first drafts being bad. Or, as Anne Lamott calls them, shitty. In her article, Shitty First

Drafts, Lamott brings comfort to her readers by sharing that she too, after years of writing

professionally, dreads her first drafts. Her remedy for this fear is to embrace those “shitty” drafts.

They serve no other purpose but to start the process to the final. One quote from this article has

stuck with me throughout the quarter:

There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that

you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you're supposed to be

writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go -- but there was no way to

get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages (Lamott).

Her message is a good reminder that it’s always going to be more effective to continue writing

nonsense as I develop my thinking in my head, then narrowing down the ideas I actually want to

use. I can always come back to reword a sentence, but I wouldn’t want to lose my train of

thought and end up with one single “perfect” sentence. I can’t honestly say that this is an issue

that has been totally resolved, but I have been practicing this quarter with just getting something

down to begin with. As hard as it is to disconnect the second order from the first order thinking, I

have found that forcing myself to keep typing has helped me a lot in starting my projects.
Ramirez 4

Once my projects do make it past those initial drafts and I deem them ready to be read by

others, it's time for peer reviews. Receiving feedback from my group members was beneficial

when revising my projects. They always ended up spotting areas I could expand on, clarify, or

even chop out. I noticed that both the comments I received and the comments I left on others

became more constructive as the quarter progressed, which I may have resulted from staying in

the same groups where we got to watch each other’s projects develop from start to finish. My

comments on others became more detailed and focused on content over spelling/grammar errors

like they have been in previous years. The article about peer editing definitely influenced this,

but I think the repetitive practice of reading and commenting was what helped me develop this

skill the most.

There is still a lot I can improve on to become a better writer, but I can tell there has been

some progress in my writing abilities over the past ten weeks. I feel much more confident in

approaching writing within different genres, and also in effectively using sources to get my

points across. These skills, along with others that we worked on in class, are ones that I would

like to continue working on. Writing 2 has required a lot of work and revision, but it has

definitely made me a better writer.


Ramirez 5

Citations

Bunn, Mike. “How to Read Like a Writer.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1,

edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, Parlor Press, 2010, 71-85

Lamott, Anne. "Shitty First Drafts.” Language Awareness: Readings for College Writers. Ed. by

Paul Eschholz, Alfred Rosa, and Virginia Clark. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s,

2005: 93-96.

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