15 February 2018

Reflection Blog Entry

During the prewriting stage I spent most of my time brainstorming what my text could be. I knew it would be some song but I was having trouble thinking of art that has impacted me. Once I realized a piece that would fit well into the rubric of this paper I began do to some background on it and tried to recall all the ways it impacted me. After this, I just created an outline for the paper which would guide my writing to fit the assignment sheet and allow me to talk about all the things I wanted to get across. Next time I’d like to create a more thorough background because I felt as if it did not supply me with enough guidance to let the paper flow out of my brain and I had to add some topics to it. I’d also like to talk to more people about my topic and get their opinions and influences on it.

During my writing phase I spewed out all my ideas on to the page thinking it would be far too much and I’d have to narrow down but I realized that I had not even hit the length requirement yet so I had to take a step back and brainstorm further and deeper than before which led to more topics to discuss. I also made sure to write the paper over a span of a couple days which allowed it to breathe and come more naturally. During my writing process I definitely learned a lot about writing myself which I feel was very helpful for future papers. For next time I beleive it may help to return to my text more often in the early phases of writing for a more fresh sense of what it is all about. I also think I should make a more bare bones and skeletal rough draft because when revision time came around it was hard to find things to change other than grammatical errors and just adding a couple more sentences.

During the revision phase of my paper I read it a couple times throughout to make sure all the grammar was correct and this also gave me a chance to see if there was anything I’d like to change or add the paper. The teacher conference day also was very helpful as it brought a different insight to the paper that I wouldn’t have thought of myself. For next time, I will definitely let more people read my paper because feedback proved to be very useful to me. Although I gave my paper to four peers, I only received one response and I didn’t have the time outside of class to show other people my paper but I will definitely incorporate that next time. I want to spend more time on the revision process for my next paper because I feel like all my thoughts went into the first draft. I think the paper would be more refined if I use more energy and ideas in the revision stage.