Understanding My Writing Process: A Journey of Self-Improvement

This essay delves into a student's personal writing process, tracing its evolution from initial struggles in school to a more refined approach. The student reflects on strategies employed during high school essay writing, emphasizing the importance of research, structuring content with engaging introductions and logical flow, and revising for grammatical accuracy. The essay highlights the significance of avoiding plagiarism and the challenges posed by distractions. It also contrasts the structured planning process suggested by experts with the student's own experiences, particularly in topic selection. The student acknowledges the time-consuming nature of research and the need for achievable goals, while also recognizing the importance of context and vocabulary in effective writing. Ultimately, the essay underscores the value of continuous effort, patience, and effective communication skills for academic and professional success. Desklib provides access to this essay and numerous other resources to aid students in their academic endeavors.

PERSONAL WRITING PROCESS
Personal Writing Process
Name of the Student
Name of University
Author’s note

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PERSONAL WRITING PROCESS
My Personal Writing Process
According to Beer (2011), “Writing is a Skill and it can be Improved”. My writing skill
started developing from my school days. During my initial school days, I used to become
perplexed by the name of writing an essay. I used to find it as nail breaking task. However, as I
grew up and got promoted to high school, my skills in writing essays got improved and the same
got reflected in my grade sheet. According to Beer (2011), good writers used strategies in order
to refine their writing skills. My strategy of writing an essay while I was in high school was, first
reading the topic given by the teacher and researching about the topic. Initially, the majority of
the topics which are assigned to the students while they are in schools are from the subjects
which are taught in their classes. So researching and reading about the topic mainly encompass
reading the study materials and then structuring the material in a specific flow like introduction,
discussion of the body of the essay or blog and finally the conclusion. Since from school, we are
taught to make the introduction engaging, crisp and short as this helps to grab the attention of the
readers. I always attempted to make my introduction attractive to my teachers or projected
readers so that it compels them to read the entire assignment. However, I used to write my
introduction at the end. This is because Greetham (2013) highlighted that introduction needs to
highlight the main points that will be discussed in the body of the essay. So while writing the
main body of the essay, I get an idea about the structure of the essay in detail and then I used to
frame the introduction in an attractive manner. At the end I used to write the conclusion. No new
concept or data was introduced in the conclusion and it was a summarized version of the entire
assignment (Adler-Kassner & Wardle, 2015). While writing the body of the essay, I mainly used
to break it into various paragraphs with logical flow of writing. At end, I used to revise my work
to iron out grammatical errors and typos and then used to submit my assignment. Because

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according to Downs (2015), revision is central part of developing professional writing. However,
like Lamott et al. (2005) said that very few writers know what they are writing until they are
done with it. This goes with me as well. Unless I am finished with my task and revise it from
scratch, I am always not sure whether my overall approach of writing the blog or essay was
correct or not. Another thumb rule of my writing skills is, I never copy other’s work, as I am
aware of the plagiarism concern and even if I paraphrase any quotes or other’s idea, I always cite
the name of the authors and the year of publication of that particular article. This goes with the
concept of assessment as highlighted by Downs (2015).
According to Beer (2011) writing is a slow process that requires concentration and I truly
agree with this. Whenever I am with my phone or in-front of TV, I face constant distraction as
my mind remains preoccupied with video running on TV or the messages flashing on phone.
This kind of distraction hampers my critical thinking skills and I tend to lose my line of thoughts
which hampers the quality of my written set of blogs. According to Adler-Kassner and Wardle
(2015) it is the role of writer to practice rhetorical work in order to address the needs and the
interests of a particular audience and any form of distraction force the writer to distract from this
preliminary requirement. According to Beer (2011) the first step of writing is planning. Under
planning there involves making the timeline, selecting a topic and creating the basic outline of
the work. This is something different from my planning of writing an essay during schools.
Because while at school we do not have scope to select a topic as topic was already assigned to
us. However, the rest part of timeline as discussed by Beer (2011) remains same as this includes
further planning, research, writing and revision. Beer (2011) stated that planning mainly involves
writing on the basis of deadlines so that there is no last minute hurry and revising it before
submission. Beer (2011) said that it is the research which consumes the majority of the time

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while writing an essay or a blog. As per my personal experience, if the research is on right track,
the essay or the blog is bound to as per the requirement. However, the concept of research has
troublesome but once done can stand out as an effective source of essay or blog writing (Adler-
Kassner & Wardle, 2015). Beer (2011) highlighted that goals for achieving the plan must be
short term and achievable and within the deadline. In this domain I used to over-estimate myself
and used to set achievable goals and this in turn undermined by confidence which hampered my
learning. In writing a blog or an essay Adler-Kassner and Wardle (2015) highlighted that words
get their meaning from the preceding words. I also truly agree with this concept. The study
undertaken by Rich (2015) argued that structuring and framing the sentences will be such that
the phrases are meaningful with logical flow of writing this increases the overall quality of
writing. However, filling the sentences with complex vocabulary is always not mandatory.
Depending upon the audience of the writing the context of the phrase the choice of vocabulary
must be done.
At the end I want to state it is not possible to transform into a magically strong writer
over-writer. Proper amalgamation of strategies, efforts and practice, patience and persistence is
what makes you a good writer. I believe that good writing skills will help to refine my effective
communication skills and at the same time will help to succeed in my academic and professional
life. I also understood that planning in steps and proper time-management and effective thinking
skills is all what is required to refine the academic or creative writing skills.

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References
Adler-Kassner, L., & Wardle, E. (2015). Naming what we know: Threshold concepts of writing
studies. Utah State University Press.
Beer, J. (2011, June 2). Writing Process Animation. Access date: 26th September 2018. Retrieved
from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1pnpL8295E.
Downs, D. (2015). Revision is Central to Developing Writing. Pp: 66-67. Access date: 26th
September 2018. Retrieved from:
https://dougdownsteaching.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/downs-revision-as-tc-a-k-and-
wardle-2015.pdf
Greetham, B. (2013). How to write better essays. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Lamott, A. Shitty First Drafts. In P. Eschholz, A Rosa, and V. Clark (Eds) (2005). Language
Awareness: Readings for College 9th ed (pp93-96). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Retrieved from https://wrd.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/1-Shitty%20First%20Drafts.pdf
Rich, C. (2015). Writing and reporting news: A coaching method. Cengage Learning.