When I received my comments on my first paper, I realized that if I had I revised my free drafts more attentively, my essay would have been a lot more thorough and would have had fewer grammatical errors. Taking what I had learned from my first essay writing experience, I applied it to the process of writing my second paper. While writing my second paper, I realized that writing is a recursive process. After writing my first free draft, I kept coming back to it, making both global and local revisions. On a separate document, I wrote down my claim sentences for each paragraph, creating an architectural draft that outlined my paragraphs. By doing this, I was able to organize my thoughts and content so that they would flow cohesively into one another. Furthermore, I ran my drafts through Grammarly which highlighted any grammatical errors I made, including punctuation and misspelled words.
This time around, I also made sure to set up a meeting with my class’s writing fellow, Sarah Smith. Prior to my meeting with her, I highlighted areas within my paper that I wanted to be looked at from an outside perspective. I have always found that these insights from others have proved to be the most helpful tool in improving my papers. When I read through what I have written by myself, I often miss simple grammatical errors that others are able to immediately point out when reading through the same text. Furthermore, I have discovered that when discussing my writing with my peers, they are able to offer suggestions to improve my sentence structure to improve the clarity of the text as a whole. When I am writing and reading through my own text, everything seems to make sense because they are my own thoughts as words. Though others reviewing my paper do not know what was going through my head while I was writing and therefore are able to give recommendations on where I can place revisions that will make my paper more understandable to everyone. During our meeting, Sarah offered suggestions on ways to make my thesis more specific, which parts I could cut out to make my thesis more concise, and ideas for organizing my ideas. I applied these suggestions while writing the final draft of my essay, showcasing my development in my approach to the recursive writing process. I went from undergoing revisions to the bare minimum to carefully reading through my drafts, weeding out irrelevant information, reorganizing thoughts, paragraphs, and sentences, and reaching out to my resources to create a final thorough, well-written essay that expands on my argument.
