For this quarter, my writing process remained the same, except for a couple small tweaks here and there. I am very relaxed when it comes to my process, meaning that this isn’t a strict thing that I absolutely have to follow in order to get my writing done. If something were to up where I couldn’t do something in my process, I would not be affected by it.
My writing process starts with gathering everything that I have received and sitting down at my desk in my dorm room. These could be like handouts of readings, examples, or assignment instructions. Since everything was on canvas this quarter, I opened up the assignment and any other page from there that I thought would be useful. I like to get everything together at the beginning so I do not have to scramble to find something in the middle of my writing. Once I get going, I do not like to have to stop for unnecessary things.
Once I have everything together, I begin to do my research. I found The Old Reader to be very helpful in research for my blogs. Having everything all on one page saved me a lot of time. For my research, I would find a couple titles that seemed interesting and skim over them to see if they were something that I could actually use.
After I found sources that I deemed to be usable, I would read through them again, but more thoroughly to find specific quotes or statistics. When I found things that I liked, I copy and pasted them onto a blank document so I did not have to search through the source later to find them again. My goal was to usually find three to five quotes or sources.
Once I had my three to five sources, I would take a little break depending on the time or if I felt like I could get it done really fast. Fifteen to twenty minutes is good enough for me for a break. My breaks usually consisted of me either eating a snack or playing around on my phone. If it was later in the day or I was pressing for time, playing around on my phone wasn’t the best option because that fifteen to twenty minutes could turn into forty-five very easily.
After my breaks are when the real writing began. Now is when I would begin to form my rough draft. Once I begin this stage, I always try to not stop until I have finished. I feel that once I stop it is very hard for me to get going again. When I was done, I normally left my draft alone until I received my peer feedback and then made appropriate changes based on that.
Like I said before, this wasn’t a strict method to follow. One thing that had the most variance was where I did my writing. Even though I preferred to do my writing at my desk in my room, for some reason or another, there were times in which I could not do this. Besides my room, I liked to write in the study room in my residence hall. I liked this place because it was quiet.
While I write, I had some things that I liked to do during my process. This stayed the same no matter where I was writing. During my process, I always like to be listening to something through my headphones. This was either music or a podcast. By wearing my headphones I can control what I hear. Other outside noises can be distracting to me.
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