Reflecting More on My Writing Process

In this blog I will continue my reflection on my writing process as a sort of brainstorming for the final project.

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1. Biggest challenges faced
Time management was by far the biggest issue.  I enjoyed writing about a topic that I loved, but in the beginning of the course I tended to write too much and burnt out creatively on the first few blogs of a section.  I also did not monitor how long each blog was taking me.  Entire saturdays flew by and deadlines got published at the last minute, which is, to say the least, stressful.

2. What I learned about time management, writing, and editorial skills
This course was definitely a personal crash course in time management.  All of the coursework was easily doable if time managed well.  Of course, that doesn't always work out and procrastination has a wonderful way of creating a lot of stress.  I will say some blog weeks were worse than most, but by the end of the course, my efficiency and planning was much less stressful.  My editing and revision skills overall were much improved as I hadn't been required to edit my writing for the last four years.

3. The concept of 'genre'
This course was definitely a discussion in genre.  The effectiveness of each piece that I have and will write depends on if I correctly identify the genre and write with the genre in mind.  I could not write an entirely opinionated article for a scientific journal nor a QRG for a letter to a publisher.  Genre is of equal importance to audience and content.  The correct style is automatic credibility boost and improves how the information is relayed.

4. Skills for future courses
The types of brainstorming and revision are definitely going to be helpful for the future.  This was a great course to remind me how much work goes into writing a published piece.  Although the research and content is important, the delivery of that information is crucial to the audience.  The best articles and books go through weeks upon weeks of revisions and rewrites.  Real world writing is a lot different than AP writing.

5. Most effective moment
Writing the first QRG was one of my more effective moments.  The combination of revisions, incorporating technologies, and writing such a huge comprehensive piece right of the bat was a great boost to my writing.  It was about an issue I cared about and I had the freedom to choose how I portrayed my opinion.  I enjoyed almost all of the blogs that I wrote because I had the freedom to write using my own style and use the blogs creatively.  Of course, the amount of blogs and a few of the more technical blogs were not as creatively encouraging, but the nitty gritty is still just as important as the creative freedom.

6. Least effective moment
My time management and the dedication of entire saturdays to blogging was not my most effective moment.  It was not smart to choose to leave 12 hours of work to a single day.  It was exhausting and counter productive to improving my writing.  I am very glad that the writing amomunt of the course got easier throughout the semester, as I would not have made it through with some of my time management at the beginning of the semester.