Writing about Writing (October 17th, 2007)

What are the major content/critical thinking/writing issues that you were confronted with on this draft?

How well do you understand the content/substance of what you are writing about?

What was your plan or strategy that you used to address these issues for this draft? Was this plan similar to the plans you have used in the past? How did you go from blank page to finished copy? How, and why, did you know those steps would work?

What are your strengths and weaknesses as a writer and thinker? Are you a strong thinker but no so good at the follow-through? Are you best at the big picture or the details? Are you a last-minute writer or do you plan things out and stick to the plan? Do you start relatively early in the time frame given for completing a writing task, or relatively late? Do you go through several early drafts, or do you simply work on your text once and then turn it in?

How well do you understand the written and verbal comments that were provided to you? What do these comments tell you about yourself as a writer and thinker?

What advice did you solicit for this draft? What was/were the source(s) of this advice? What advice were you given on this draft?

What advice did you accept? Reject? Why?

Describe the major changes that you made on this draft. Provide a rationale for why you made these changes.

How has the revision process allowed you to see content, in general, in a more sophisticated way.

How has the writing and thinking that you have been asked to do in the past prepared you for the kinds of writing and thinking that you were asked to do for this assignment?
While I've never been assigned an 'exploritory' essay in any other class by specific definition I have done lots of creative pieces where I come to a conclusion while working through my thoughts in the paper. In my first draft of this paper, I did more of an annilitical paper with a majority of the writing being plot summary and then explaining the relevence of that part of the novel. My 2nd draft was not much better; i pretty much just decided to put in new quotes, correct sentence structure, but the content did not chane drastically. For my 3rd draft (the one I'm turning in today) I went back to the first draft and decided to eleborate on parts both you and peers in my writing group found confusing. By doing this, I think the changes are more meaningful than my 2nd draft and the plot proves something until the end when I make my point. Thus, I think that my expereience with creative writing in my sophomore year where I made my "moral" at the end of the story helped me to write this essay where I put my thesis at the end of the paper, rather than the beginning.


What are your goals for your next piece? Where do those goals come from?
My goal for my next piece is to condence the paper. Rewriting the paper over several nights this week I would spend about an hour on each paragraph, reworking the order, adding sentences, correcting, deleting, and so on. The result is a 4 and a half paper paper, which I think explains my point very well, but my goal is to get to my point in a more conceise, fast way.

What are your over-arching goals for yourself as a writer? Why are these your goals?
My goal as a writer this year is to understand each style of paper in a way that makes me get the paper right the first time. By this I mean that I want to understand the assignment and be able to give a great draft on my first draft, instead of having to work until my 3rd to get a product I'm sincerely proud of. This is a goal of mine because if I'm able to produce a wonderful first draft that follows the assignment then my final draft ought to be extremely thoughtful.

What do you think your main goals should be as writer and thinker, given what you have experienced so far in AP English?
I think my main goal should be exaiming the text in a meaningful, thought-provoking way that makes me analyze a novel or portion of a novel in a way that I would not have if I had just read it. I feel that in class discussions bring out new points and thoughts that I never had considered on my own before and thus by pushing myself to do further examinations on my own will help me to be a deeper thinker and a better writer.

What is your criteria for quality work?
My criteria for quality work is very ambugious because I think every paper has its own expectations and its individual goals that I need to acheive as a writer. For this paper, I wanted every part of my paper to support the thesis I got to in the end and thus the criteria for any sentence I wrote was for me to ask the question, "how is this relevent?" and "do I need this?"

What was the most important thing you learned while working on this piece?
The most important thing I learned while writing this paper was that I need to focus less on what happens in the book and how it relates to my thesis and more on how my thesis relates to the book. By this I mean, instead of looking for parts in the book that are true to my thesis, I tried in this draft to instead look into my thesis and brainstorm instances in the book where the thesis is true. By doing this I found that my orginial thesis was not always true, so I twiched it to make it more relevent to the story. Essentially, I learned that the thesis needs to be crafted before I look for text that supports it, which in the past I have done.