blog 15-Writing process paper

I can compare my writing process to how I feel when I first learn how to do something. Whether it was learning how to ride a bike or learning how to cook I always unconciously go through the same process. First I “Mimick” then I become “Fearful” after that I realize I have to get over my fear and then I suddenly become “energetic” after being energetic for a while it brings me to a “relaxed” state and lastly I become “confident”. They say we are a product of our environment. My environment growing up was that my parents always babied me. Therefore anything new I would learn would be in “baby steps”. All the different stages in my learning process resembles me as a scared child, I need someone to guide me first and once I finally reach my goal I can be independent. Whether or not this process is a rocky process to get my writing done it has worked for me for many years.
When I gather ideas before writing a paper I begin "mimicking". I gather up all the information of what is needed to be written for the assignment and ask others what they think they will be focusing on. If it is on a particular subject such as history I ask myself the question "what stuff would a historian add in this paper"? "How can I make this resemble a true historical biography"? When I first learned how to dance ballet I would spend more of my time watching the teacher on her style of dancing then what she was actually teaching in class. It felt better for me to copy how she moved her arms and her posture because I wasn’t confident enough to just listen to what she was saying. Like a child who is first learning how to talk they “mimick” the people around them on what ever they say and how they say it. This is done because they are trying to adjust to the environment. Furthermore, whatever writing assignment that is given to me I gather ideas that will be most appropriate to that environment.
During the prewriting process I become "fearful". My fear of not writing a good piece kicks in when I jot down a couple of words. This all goes back to when I first started handing in papers in school and got bad grades on them with negative feedback. The way I felt when I received those comments conditioned me to fear my ideas when ever I start writing them. The same goes with me when I learn something new. I always reference my new experience with a bad one because I am to precautious of getting hurt mentally or physically. A great example would be me learning how to make rice. Right when I was ready to start the rice I remembered how embarrassed I got when I first learned how to make fried chicken and didn’t cook them all the way; everyone laughed at me and told me they would never try my cooking again. As soon as I remembered how I felt I procrastinated for about an hour. With prewriting the “fear” takes me to a long journey of procrastination. Writing one sentence, reading it a thousand times, to erase it and write something else.
During the process of creating a draft for my paper I become “energetic”. All my energy is put into getting everything I wanted to say in writing down. This happens because the deadline for the paper is coming up and I need to stop procrastinating. As soon as I tell myself this, the energy brings out the creativity in me. This happened to me with the literacy Narrative that I wrote. I spent alot of time in the prewriting process stressing how bad of a grade I would get also that all of my ideas started not to make sense. By the time I was doing that the draft was due the night before. I suddenly snapped out of my fear and told myself “ you have to just write”. Furthermore, when I first learned how to swim I spent my time in the “fear” stage procrastinating so much that when I realized that there was a line of people in back of me waiting to jump in the pool I just told myself “you have to do it” and that is when all my energy came out of me and I began to swim. Knowing that the due date for the assignment is a day away is my motivation to just get something down on paper because I know that if I don’t write something my “fears” will actually become true.
When it is time for me to have my final paper ready I am already “relaxed”. I used up all my energy during the last stage that I feel confident enough by this time to let what ever I wrote stay the way it is. During my process of writing a draft I usually write half of what is required for the final paper. So when I’m in this stage I am still coming up with ideas however, I do not put that much thought into what I am writing because I already got the hang of it. Once I got the hang of making rice I stoped measuring how much water I needed to put in it. I also stoped staring at the pot of rice cooking while holding a wooden spoon in my hand ready to turn over the rice once the bowling water was soaked up. I also started walking away from the kitchen. This stage in the learning process lets me finish up what I learned in a way that shows myself that it is a rewarding experience. With finishing up the final paper I feel the same way. Unconciously, I am telling myself that I accomplished a well developed paper and I should feel rewarded hence not put anymore strain on myself for it.
The last stage in my writing process is the revision. When ever I revise I take hardly nothing out because I am at my “confidence” stage. After analyzing other people’s ideas, procrastinating for a while and then finally getting my ideas on paper, I can not see anything wrong with what I wrote. Therefore, it takes for someone else to read my paper to hit me with reality and even that won’t make me budge. A great exwample would be a paper I wrote in highschool about my best memories of school throughout the years. After the final paper was written I had my mom read it over. She critiqued it up and down. Even though I was insulted I argued how great of a piece I thought it was. It seems that during this stage instead of me looking at the outside product which is the paper, I am looking at the inside product which is my ideas and time invested that I am trying to defend. Therefore, I might rearrange a couple of words or change my focus, which I ended up doing for my literacy Narrative, I don’t change around paragaphs or even take full paragraphs away. Furthermore, when I first learned how to parrallel park I did the same thing. My confidence was so high that when my father would yell at me about how I almost hit the car behind me I would argue my case instead of trying to get better at it.
My writing process has changed for the last 4 years through procrastination. I remembered in highschool I would start thinking about what I was I going to write two weeks before the due date but now It has gotten as close as a day before the due date. Therefore, all the stages I go through to get to my final paper become tougher for me because I am pressed for time. Last semester I had to write a paper on the conflict in the Pais Vasco and I waited till the last minute. Gathering ideas from other people was harder for me because I was trying to find anything on the internet that could help me get an idea about what I should write. Usually when I had more time I would ask my classmates what they were going to write or be very selective what I decided to “mimick” but when I lost the privelege to do that I just went with what ever I found. Also, all the other stages such as “fearing” and becoming “energetic” started to take a spin. My fear got more intense and my energy started to feel like “anxiety”. This in turn has caused me to stress more about writing because I think about the process instead of the end result which is the grade.
The reason why I give myself less time to go through all of the stages in the writing process is similar to how I’ve been giving myself less time to learn something. I feel like there is just to many things going on in my life that need more attention therefore learning something new has to be shortened a bit. A great example of this would be me learning to write a check out. During this time that my mother was teaching me I was going through a break up. Therefore I wanted to hurry up the process of learning how to write it out because I wanted to get on the phone and cry to my friend about how hurt I was. I did feel the pressure of the stages going by fast. I was trying to “mimick” my mom while thinking about the situation and it caused me to just forget what she showed me.
Shortening the time that I have to go through to get to all the stages of my writing process has not been working for me physically. I spend nights without sleep trying to hurry up and get something down on paper. I even skipped classes due to the lack of sleep. I also break out with pimples when I am at a press for time for a paper that I am trying to get done. It has caused my “relaxed” stage to feel more like a “exhausted” stage. My ideas no longer exist at this point and I start writing things that don’t make sense just so I can fill up the page. I even start messing around with the font size and do other rediculous things that have nothing to do with my writing process.
However, I do see a difference with my writing process for school and my writing process for a friend. The first difference is that I give myself alot of time to gather ideas because I am interested in what I have to say to them. My “fear” stage isn’t is as intense because I know that it is an informal conversation I am having. Lastly, I don’t feel stress when writing to them because I know they wouldn’t judge me. If I could channel how interested I get when writing to them to my interest in writing a school paper than I could change the time I give myself to prepare and write my final piece. Like Dr Chandler said, whatever the writing assigment is she still tries make it her own. Meaning, she tries to add in whatever she is interested in or whatever is going on in her head at the moment and make it relatable to what she needs to write. Therefore, she becomes motivated to get it done. If I could do this I know my procrastination level would be shortened because I am excercizing something that is going on in my head.
On the other hand, some of my strengths in my writing process is my “mimicking”. I written alot of good papers because of this. If people don’t have something to reference to then they can be even more lost than they were before. Moreover, the way I can strengthen my “mimicking” of ideas is by brainstorming certain topics related to what ever I am assigned to write just so I can get a bigger selection on what I want to write about. “Mimicking” in my learning process has caused me to be one of the best dancers in my dance school. I always tried to be like the dancers that I most admired on television and once I was confident enough that I got the steps right I even added my own style to it. This eventually caused other younger dancers in this school to look up to me and “mimick” how I would dance.
In conclusion, I find that my writing process throughout the years has changed a little bit but overall has still been the original one that I follow. The strength of it has definitly caused me to get good grades and the weakness of it has caused me to physically dread writing. Nevertheless, learning something new in life causes the same rewarding and unpleasant experiences. One wouldn’t know that a stove is hot unless they touch it by accident, burn their hand and learn that they should never do it again. Likewise they learn how to read and read to their little brother or sister and find that their siblings love them so much and look up to them for it. I will change my new habits of procrastination once I go through a true physical break down. I know this because even though I say to myself “I can’t keep waiting till the last minute to do things”! I still am right back to where I started.