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The Writing Process Draft 2

Tyler Bosworth analyzes their writing process in a reflective essay. They tend to overthink writing prompts and put off starting papers. Their first drafts lack structure, but revising helps improve coherence. Specifically, Bosworth struggles with forming a clear thesis statement. In an English 5 paper on police conduct, the thesis was implied but not directly stated. Bosworth is aware their process needs work and hopes future classes will help their writing evolve.

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84 views

The Writing Process Draft 2

Tyler Bosworth analyzes their writing process in a reflective essay. They tend to overthink writing prompts and put off starting papers. Their first drafts lack structure, but revising helps improve coherence. Specifically, Bosworth struggles with forming a clear thesis statement. In an English 5 paper on police conduct, the thesis was implied but not directly stated. Bosworth is aware their process needs work and hopes future classes will help their writing evolve.

Uploaded by

api-318189466
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Bosworth 1

Tyler Bosworth
23, February 2016
English 20
Anya Connely
The Writing Process
Literature is always changing. Obviously reading something that was
written fifty years ago will sound much different than something written now.
Our writing style is very similar.

The writing process that we have in our

younger years should be much different than what it is now. If our writing
never evolves, then we will be stagnant with our writing and rendered
ineffective to most audiences that we write to. One of the biggest parts of
writing is the writing process and what we do to put words on the paper and
strategies of revising. My writing process has stayed relatively similar
throughout my scholastic life and hopefully with this class I can finally find
the fire the feeds the evolution in my writing process that I have been
looking for and is much needed.
When I receive a prompt for an essay, I think I read it over about five
different times before I actually start to type anything, and then put it away.
A couple days later I take out the prompt again and I read over a couple
more times and then I put it away again. I always fear that if I just begin
writing I will regret what I put on the paper and it is a bit daunting to erase
much of the work I have done already because I did not like it. I will usually
inadvertently think of the prompt while doing something throughout the day

Bosworth 2

and attempt to mix around some ideas in my head. What I mean by this is
just keeping the prompt active in my head and thinking about it keeps the
process going, even when not looking at the prompt or typing.

I do this

process until I decide that I need to write my paper. When writing, I never
really take advantage of the teacher/professors office hours.

Dan Melzer

wrote in his Understanding Writing Assignments: Tips and Techniques that,


Most teachers really appreciate students who take the time to visit them
during their office hours and ask thoughtful questions about the assignment
(Melzer, 158).

I do not usually think it is worth my time to go see the

professor about the prompt before I am writing because I think that the
prompt has told me everything that I need to know about the paper. Seeing
a teacher could really help my writing process be much more effective in the
beginning stages because it could help me understand the prompt better
and I could get some tips learning how to be successful on this paper.
Most of the time, I will start writing at night and then wake up early in
the morning and finish it then. When I bring out my computer and I begin
typing, one of the hardest things for me is my first paragraph.

The first

paragraph in an essay is essential to attracting the reader and establishing


ethos. After the first paragraph much of the stress of the paper lifts off of my
shoulders and I can focus on guiding the paper in the direction that it needs
to go.

Bosworth 3

When writing the body paragraphs, it usually seems to be me looking


at the prompt and answering the questions with each paragraph and not
going off and doing my own thing. What I mean by doing my own thing is
going off and being side tracked in a paper could sometimes lead the reader
somewhere that I do not want them to go while reading my paper or dilute
my thesis statement. The paragraphs seem to flow somewhat seamlessly,
but in some cases I run into the problem of not filling enough pages. After I
panic for a couple minutes I insert some fluff in each paragraph so that I can
fulfill the allotted pages. Adding fluff to a paper in my opinion is adding
more examples, quotes, evidence, or just more general content. Fluffing up
my paper sometimes makes my paper a bit better even though I am a bit
stressed while writing it.
Writing my last paragraph in an essay is a great feeling. It is equal to
making that last turn on the track and being able to see the finish line and
thinking it will all be over soon. I usually just tie everything that I wrote in
the body paragraphs and relate it to the thesis that had taken me 2 hours to
think up that probably isnt even that good. The conclusion paragraph for
me is a great way to leave my audience thinking that I actually cared about
the paper that I wrote when about fifty percent of the time I did not enjoy
having to write it (most often because the topic is not very interesting to
me). On those papers that I did not have a problem writing (like this one) I
think it is obvious because my writing seems to be a bit more passionate.

Bosworth 4

Revising; meaning to look at and fix some problems that arise in my


writing, has never really been easy for me to do. When I write something
down, I feel like it is automatically good if it is grammatically sound and it is
spelled correctly. It is not easy for me to spot things that need adding or
taken out so I usually have someone read it for me and have them critique it
for me. It is effective much of the time, but I think I should be able to spot
things that need to be removed by myself and not rely on another person to
do it for me.
The writing that I have chosen to analyze is the discourse community
research paper I did for my English 5 class last semester. My paper
demonstrates good evidence and smooth transitions from paragraph to
paragraph, but the one thing I noticed was the lack of thesis strength.

found myself having this problem for much of my writing, and is definitely
something that I need to improve on. In my first paragraph in my English 5
paper, I tell the audience about a police officers motto which is to Protect
and Serve and then continue to talk about how police officers do not adhere
to the motto in some cases. I was able to somewhat tell the audience what
they might see in the next paragraph with my transition sentence at the end
of the paragraph being, What police learn in the academy are supposed to
perpetuated in the world, but the police do not always adhere to what they
are taught. I did fail however to tell the audience what my thesis statement
was for the paper which would be, Although police are taught to protect
and serve in the academy, when given the power of a civil servant, they

Bosworth 5

tend to abuse it because they feel they have freedom to do things that
civilians cannot.

This thesis statement would have prepared readers to

expect statistics on police brutality and other things police do sometimes


that do not reflect the motto of their outfit.
The thesis statement is something that unites the entire paper in a few
short sentences. It is crucial for the validity of the work and even making the
paper effective. I know that if I look at my writing process at the end of my
college career it will be different and I am excited to see where this class and
my future classes take me.

Bibliography
Melzer, Dan. Understanding Writing Assignments: Tips and Techniques.
Portsmouth, NH:Boyton/Cook-Heinmann, 2003. Print
Bosworth, Tyler D. Police Force. California State University Sacramento.
English 5. Malmberg, J. 14th May, 2015. Essay.

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