Writing drafts is something I struggle with every time I have to do an essay. It takes me over two hours to finish an introduction. Once done with the introduction the body of the essay easy until I get to the conclusion, which is when my struggle to complete the draft returns. I believe the introduction of a draft is one of the most difficult parts for me of writing a draft because it is hard to come up with ideas for the introduction. Then the conclusion is hard because I have to find a way to restate what took me so long to come up with for the introduction. Ultimately, I will be able to complete a draft without difficulty for if I do them step by step and by write down my ideas and information before beginning anything and not to do it all at once, or by doing the body of the essay before the introduction.
I think that writing down my ideas before beginning an essay is very helpful. I can see this in the unit 3 essay. Before the class began to write their first draft, we had to do an annotated bibliography, where I wrote lots of the information I was going to use for my...
In the article “Shitty First Drafts,” By Anne Lamott, she lets out the long held secret to good writing, there is never a good first run on a paper. It 's always starts off as a torrent of ideas unfiltered, ideas completely let loose. It is the draft that is never shown to anyone, the draft that holds all the dirty little thought that you have on a topic, and all the information that you may use later on. It does not matter if the draft is ten pages long filled with unreadable text in the end the good stuff you use could only fill up three pages.
I have always had troubles writing the introduction of papers. The introduction is the base and sets the mood of the whole paper. I believe it is the most important paragraph in the paper. But once I develop the introductory paragraph, I find the rest of the paper easier to write. In order for me to better myself in writing introductory paragraphs, I just have to get more in touch with my creative side. After the rough draft, the students of the class would bring their papers to the course and would get into groups to peer review the papers. This would helpful to receive the views of our peers to help edit our assignment. After the peer review of the rough draft, the next step of the writing process was the revision. The revision was when we take the information and opinions from the groups and corporate them into our papers. Also, for the revision, you would offer work days for you to proof read our paper before we had to type our final copy. This was extremely beneficial for us to get your opinion on our paper d...
When we see well know writers, the ones who are making a lot of money from getting many of books published, we see them as people who just wake up and sit at their desks, feeling good about themselves and knowing how talented they are, and just start typing these excellent passages. Not one of those authors just write perfect first drafts. Only few writers know what they are doing until they have already done it. They don’t just start typing a couple of sentences then all of a sudden start writing these masterpieces. Sometimes we feel that writing is a struggle to do, even those writers who have to best written essays. A first draft is called the “child’s draft,” you let all of your words spill onto the paper in no certain order, but no one will see it and you can put the words together later. For now you just let all of your thoughts, no matter how immature they may seem, be written down. Because in all those crazy sentences there may be something good or rational that is most mature. Without doing this first draft you would have never gotten to that point
In “The Maker’s Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscript,” Donald M. Murray makes it clear that any individual who writes their first draft is only just beginning the true process of writing. As Murray states, writing is a never ending process that constantly needs new revisions. His main goal of this passage is to allow writers to understand some of the strategies and approaches that come with revising a draft. Murray does provide many supporting evidence to convince a reader of his strategies to be very useful and I agree with this author on improving writers’ writings.
One aspect of my writing process is my “one and done” mentality. Meaning I only do one simple draft of my essay based on the outline I made and turn it in. Most of this has to do with the pride I have in my work and the fact that I don 't like to think that I have made any mistakes. Another factor in this is my being too lazy to conceive another draft out of my first. Anne Lamott’s entertaining Shitty First Drafts stated that even the most accomplished and established of writers’ first drafts are not perfect and ready to be published, so consequently my first drafts definitely should not be. I loved the way she mentioned that you have to do a shitty first draft to get a good second draft and a good second draft to get a terrific third draft.
“Draft NO. 4” by John McPhee, issued April 29, 2016, explains tips and strategies a writer can use to become the best of their ability and how drafts help strengthen a paper. He interprets how great writers have difficulties writing and not to be discouraged by the struggles that comes along with writing. He is writing to anyone who is a writer, whether they portray that image or not. McPhee is very informative in “Draft NO. 4” and has glimps of humor, also. In “Draft NO. 4”, McPhee explains tips such as writing with confidence, accumulating experience, drawing boxes around different words, and using dictionaries when writing a well-written paper. I agree with these points because they will help not only novice writers but also the most experienced
When writing a five paragraph essay, there are five steps one must fallow in order to attain perfection, these steps include understanding the question, brainstorming, writing a rough copy, revising, and creating a final draft. The first and most important step is understanding the topic. The topic of the essay is what the essay will be about and if this is misunderstood, the whole essay will be off course. The second step, brainstorming, will help organize thoughts and ideas so they flow amiably. There are many different ways to brainstorm, some of the most helpful are making a web of ideas, making a list of ideas, or creating a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the conviction. All these ideas will be related to the topic at hand. For example, if the essays topic is about how the earth is affected by global warming, then the brainstorming ideas might include the ozone lair being reduced or how global climate has raised. The third step when writing a five paragraph essay is creating the rough draft. The first draft must have all the features the final will, but does not have to be...
After reading the “College Writing” article, I can compare myself to that article because the article actually tells me what my college professors expect me to do when I reach into that level. I feel like everything I learned from my previous classes and what I did in those previous classes had nothing to do with what college professors require me to do. For example, in the “College Writing” article it said, “The five paragraph theme is a good way to learn how to write an academic essay.” I realized that in college we go beyond the academic essay, so why am I still being taught the five paragraph essay? Shouldn’t we be prepared for the college five page, six page or even seven page essays? If the article tells me exactly why the five paragraph essay is not a good method to be used, than why am I still being taught to write a five paragraph essay? When it comes to writing, I wish I can just run away from it, because writing has been my least favorite thing to do.
When writing an essay, I begin by understanding the genre or the purpose of the writing assignment and knowing who will read my essay. Brainstorming and organizing all the details, ideas, and adding examples come next. I gather my evidence from my own personal experiences, from the experiences of those who are close to me, and from trusted sources, like books, journals,
Over the years of my schooling, I have gradually developed my writing preparation to help me become a better writer. I continue to find ways to improve my writing abilities by working on my weaknesses and by incorporating the feedback I receive from my peers and my instructors into my essays. At times, I still struggle when preparing to start my essay, but with precise and organized planning and obtaining the help of others, I am certain that I will become more proficient in my writing
This article “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott help me understand that every good writer struggle to write their first draft and it might not be perfect at first but with a lot of dedication and effort everything could be done as expected. know that even the best published book started out with “Shitty First Drafts” help me to not be too critical to my first draft and having a little bit more confidences about my writing. I would apply this lesson whenever I have a writing assignment and I am get frustrated on how to start my essay, I would remember that all writers went through this stage of anxiety and not comfortable about their first draft. I would definitely recommend this article to a student that is starting their first composition
When I am assigned to write an essay, the first thing I do is panic. I panic because I always seem to run into the same problems with my writing process. I have no central idea. I have no clue what I actually want to write about. When I was younger, I always started by making a web or an outline because thats what my teachers encouraged me to do in school, but I don’t do that anymore. Now I sit in front of my laptop, I take a deep breath, close my eyes, gather my thoughts, and type. I just let my thoughts flow onto the page. When I don’t feel the pressure of writing to an audience, my writing is completely different than it is when I am writing something that I know my professor or peers will read. As I am writing this exact sentence, I don’t quite know where I am going with it. My writing process is unorthodox and unorganized, but it is what I do everytime. When I stop trying to follow the linear model of writing, explained by Nancy Sommers as the process of forming an idea, writing about it, then revising afterwards, I feel that I am more capable of discovering something meaningful within my words. When I am forced to write a thesis statement and base my paper solely on it, it doesn’t come out as good as I think it should. It decreases the potential for my ideas to grow and discoveries to be made. It limits me to a single statement and narrows my thoughts, preventing me from discovery.
The entire writing process has changed for me over the course of this semester. Each and every step in the writing process is crucial for a well-rounded essay. For each essay I wrote during the semester, I followed the same procedure. First, I would think of an idea and try to write down as much as I could about it. For example, during the prewriting stage for the analytical essay, I brainstormed how my commercial was similar and different from the commercial Scholes analyzed.
Over the past semester, I have found the most challenging part of this course to simply be the transition from high school composition classes to college. Because writing expectations are so different in college than in high school, even with AP and Dual Enrollment “college level” classes, I first found myself being overwhelmed with the pressure to write the perfect first draft. The pressure came from knowing how much a final draft of a paper contributed to my grade. This left me sitting in front of my computer for hours at a time with thoughts of what I wanted to say racing through my head, but unable to deliver these thoughts into organized, structured sentences. I learned, through writing my persuasive essay, that instead of trying to write the paper start to finish and already in its perfect form, it is easier for me to look at the paper through its different components and focus on them individually, then work to best organize my ideas fluently.
In the past, I used to start writing an essay without writing an outline. I even did not brainstorm before I began to write. As a result, my essays were undoubtedly messy and disorganized. For instance, after I finished writing my Paper 2, I asked my professor for suggestions. He advised me to rearrange the order of paragraphs since my essay was disorganized and disordered. At that moment, I finally realized that if I did not plan out what I was going to write, my essay would be less likely to be logical because outline is like a base and foundation of an article. Hence, I started writing an outline from then on. For example, I nowadays would like to write my thesis statement down first. After that, I will briefly write down what I will talk about in body paragraphs. After using pre-writing skills and techniques, I notice that my essays are much more organized; and thus, my essays are no...