Revising My Writing Process

In this post I will reflect on my current writing process and time management skills, by reflecting on two of my earliest posts: "My Writing Process" and "Calendar Reflection".

martinak15, "259/365 Clock Work." 7/1/2012 via Flickr. Attribution 2.0 Generic

At the start of this semester I considered myself to be a writer who fell under the categorization of a "planning procrastinator". Before this class began my writing process consisted of heavy planning, somewhat rushed drafting, and little to no revision. However, I have definitely seen a lot of major changes in the way that I go about writing assignments. I still enjoy having detailed outlines that help me organize all of my ideas and support, but now I can really see the many benefits that dedicating a significant time to revision can bring to my work. Being forced to spend at least a week editing each of my projects--discarding/rewriting large chinks of my work, focusing solely on punctuation, getting feedback on my writing, and providing comments on my peers' work--really showed me how greatly my project could be improved due to careful revision. I now see that every aspect of the writing process is crucial in producing well-written work, thus I feel that I can now consider myself to to be a "Sequential Composer", because I have an equal appreciation for every step of the writing process. Also, I have gotten into the habit of looking over my work as I write, which is another aspect of why I can confidently classify myself into this category of writers.

Clearly, I am no longer a writer who relies solely on detailed planning, but what about the procrastinator portion of my self-proclaimed title? Well, when I wrote my "Calendar Reflection" post earlier this semester I figured out that I had allotted myself enough free time to successfully get all of the necessary work done for my classes each week, but in order to do this I would need to break the habit of saying I would do things "later". This was easier said than done, however. For the first few deadlines of this semester I procrastinated and caused myself nothing but undue worry and anxiety, however as the term progressed I actually started to follow the goals that I set for myself in my "Calendar Reflection". When I began to plan out my days and the work that I wanted to get done on those days (and actually do the work, rather than pushing it off) English 109H and all of my other classes became a lot less stressful. After dedicating myself to getting my assignments done early, the quality of my work work improved, along with my ability to have more time for fun.

Overall, I think this class has really proven the idea that the work you put into something really impacts what you get out of that task. Moving forward into next semester and the next three years of my college education, I will use the many of the skills that this class has provided me with. I will make a conscience effort to never let my old procrastinating ways get the best of me, because it hurts not only my mental well-being, but also how well my final projects turn out. Also, I will remind myself of the fact that every step in a process is important, even though they might not have seemed of great value to me at first, because each of those steps helps me to get closer to achieving my goals, whatever they may be.