Strategies to R-E-A-D

When I read, I only want to read for pleasure. I read what I think is good and what I'm interested in. When I have to read something that I find pointless, boring, and sometimes confusing, I like to just skip words. Just to make the whole process go by faster. The worst of them all though, is reading my own work. I'll read it and think it sounds good but to someone else, it could be completely different. They say when reading something difficult you should match the pace of your reading to the dificulty of the text. The goal of a whole reading is to find out what the story is about and where its headed.

Ed && Proof

Editing and Proofreading, or Ed and Proof, are what I like to call the tie, and end of the writing process. It's tieing the bow of your paper. You check your writing and words and punucations, etc. All that jazz, to make sure its as perfect as it can be. What to your knowledge is "perfect".

You need to also make sure that your attention is getting acrossed and its readable. That your introduction catches the readers attention, if your sentences are complete and your language is vivid and clear. Don't forget to check if your verbs are correct! I agree with the text in the book when it says, "Proofreading is like checking your apperance in a mirror before going into a job interview...". When you proofread you check everything, and reread everything a couple times. Some helpful hints to proofread correctly would be; read your text out loud, ask someone else to read it, work backwards and read the last sentence first, and make sure you read every sentence and not skip ahead.

Dreading Drafting

It's finally time to start drafting, the longest and hardest part of the whole process. Well at least for me. You need to begin by setting a deadline for your paper. I procrastinate, so a deadline is very, very important for a paper. "You need reasearch done by _____; rough draft by _____; revisions by ____; final draft completely done by ____." Don't start all this in the last 24 hours. When you begin to write, be comfortable and use techniques that you have been taught before. Like free writing, just writing in spurts, or break it into sections. You'll have plenty of surprises when you start writing, so don't worry. Nothing is set in stone and you can avoid and get around writers block. When you begin to write, write for yourself. Don't think about what others will say, but after revising it, then consider how other will read it. Ask yourself these questions: What works?, What still needs work?, and Where do you need to say more (or less)?. Always think about the rhetorical situation, such as the purpose for your writing and to whom your writing for. When you write always examine the text and what needs more work and what doesn't. Others opinions really matter in your writing. They can always give you more hints and advice. They can tell you if you need more details in your beginning, or if your thesis wasn't clear enough. And once again, revise, revise, and revise! It's like the basic rule of writing. They say revising, rereading, and rewriting are the three important factors in the end of the writing process. Just reread your paper until you think it sounds just right.

Being Narrative

When you begin to write a paper we all usually struggle and don't really know where to start. In the chapters about drafting and informing the audience which you desire to inform, or tell your narrative story, they tell you techniques in which you can use to map out and schedule a good time to stay focused and on track. First off, you should never procrastinate and wait to the last minute to do your paper, things could happen and then technically your lost. You should find a place that's comfortable to you and somewhat inspiring for you and your writing. You want a place that doesn't distract you or keep you off track. When starting to write, use techniques like free writing and breaking things down into smaller segments, and you have to remember that your first draft is just ideas and the beginning, nothing has to be perfect or set in stone. Try to any type of writers block by asking yourself questions, take a break, use the techniques for beginning writing or do research. Especially in a Narrative story, detail and description are very important. You want the reader to feel and hear what your explaining, as if your actually showing them. Another important aspect is dialogue, a "colorful and interesting," aspect to your story. When using dialogue, you intrigue the readers by letting someone else into the story and let them share their opinion and point of view your trying to get across. In the end, when writing a narrative story it needs to have a full beginning to end with a point and moral to your story. It needs to have order, transitions, incredible detail, and a good situation. That all combined will give a terrific narrative story that everyone will want to read.

Learning my ABC's.

When your learning to read and write, things become difficult and you have many obstacle's to overcome. Such as grammar and punctuation, style of writing, genre, outlines, words and sentences, pronunciation, and so on. I find it my greatest struggle when writing a paper to generate ideas and finding subject of my paper itself. It's a challenge to come up with ideas and the context to your paper without wanting to ramble on about nonsense. In this chapter these helpful hints could be very useful when trying to start a paper, like for instance, free writing and clustering are two good techniques. Free writing would get you started with ideas because you can't stop and clustering would enable you to have many details about your story from branching off one thing to another. Reading and writing can be very difficult. Especially when your not grown accustom to it. For instance in the readings, each individual had to learn read and write to be able to grow and survive in the United States. It's an essential and necessary need to be able to do these things, especially here. We find education very important and respectable. Such as in the reading about the girl who was learning English after growing up and being taught Spanish. She wanted to learn how to speak and write in English in order to fit in and become successful someday. I think reading and writing could seem to be so simple and plain to people, almost bland. But to most others, it can be a challenge in and of itself. I too need help when I read and write, I need help generating ideas for a paper and understanding texts, just like anybody else who is even just learning their ABC's.

Writing For The Crowd

They say that all writing has a purpose, a purpose that we use to express ourselves in all certain kinds of ways. Such as rhetorical situations and all different kinds of genres. I say they're right about it, I write for an audience, or for myself. I write for fun and I write for school. All and all writing has the same structure and techniques. They say, "The genre thus determines how we read and how we interpret what we read." I think genre is one big factor in the way we choose to write our stories. It effects the stance of our story, that audience and what they may like, the kind of media we may choose to use, or even the purpose of writing the whole thing. I would choose to write a song if I knew my audience would enjoy it. I would then share a Narrative story with them in the song. I would share vivid details about something I'd want them to hear, maybe even persuade them. My narrative song/story would be something important to me that I would want to share with my audience. I would want them to be interested in my story as much as I am.