MWA 2 // Changing Writing

Chapter 3 of Changing Writing talks about the process of writing a paper. It starts from the beginning of the process of writing a paper: brainstorming. Then it goes through the rough draft and how to approach initial ideas. I did not brainstorm on my own that much and just started writing the paper. I like to jump in right away because the first paragraph or so is always the hardest for me. I tend to procrastinate starting papers because I never know how to start. Changing Writing brought up how there are many different ways to work through your initial ideas first before beginning the actual assignment. You can gather resources, make charts, reviews notes, etc. I definitely went through a lot of sources to find the ones that I thought would work best in my paper. However, I threw them together as I wrote MWA 2 and did not plan ahead by connecting them beforehand. For my argument against what I was trying to persuade, I feel like I had too few sources. My argument was therefore unsupported by sufficient research and evidence. 

One other thing that was emphasized was PACT: purpose, audience, context and text. In my paper, I focused a lot on the purpose because I was trying to use the resources I had to emphasize my point. Although I tried to incorporate all aspects of PACT, I definitely lost sight of my audience a bit. Looking back on my writing process, I now realize that I do not have a clear audience. My paper addresses the general public and I lack a definitive focus group. Aiming at too wide a range of people can make it difficult to effectively persuade people to change their minds or act a certain way.

After starting the paper, I realized I needed extra help so I went to Writing Services. The tutor helped me improve on my original ideas and brainstorm more ideas to further extend my paper. It was helpful to have someone else look at my paper because feedback is useful to improve my writing. We wrote down on a white board a list of new topics/ideas. Slowly, we went through and added to or crossed out each one. This technique helped me get a better picture of what I actually wanted to include in my writing and what was just distracting from my main goal. At the end, we made an outline which gave me an idea of how I was going to format the rest of MWA 2.