Lukas Znosko

Portrait of a Writer Reflection & Autoethnography

Recently, I had to write two essays. The first was the Portrait of a Writer, in which I had
to describe my writing process and explain how I wrote. Meanwhile, I recorded my actions
throughout the entire time that I was writing. After I completed the portrait, I was assigned to
write an autoenthnography, analyzing what I saw in this recording, and compare and contrast
what I thought my writing process to what it actually is. Looking back on the assignment, I feel
that I did well in accomplishing the purpose of the assignment. I provided what my writing
process was in the portrait, and after looking at the recording I saw the exact same writing
process I described.
Writing these essays for me came with relative ease. With my writing process, I sat down,
buckled down and just wrote until I had no more thoughts left. This way I got all my thoughts
out and didnt really end up cutting out half the essay like I would have when I was younger.
When it came to revising, I made a few minor changes, but for the most part kept all the content
in it, just expanded on it. A reading that really helped me was an article from Rose. It was about
the constraints that the revision process puts on students and how it ended up cutting out so much
of their essays. When I was revising I made sure that I did not go too deep into it. For this reason
I think my revision process was effective. I made sure that I only expanded instead of subtracted
on my ideas because to me, they were important and seemed to describe what I wanted to say.
I believe that this assignment gave me a lot of insight into who I am as a writer. It helped me
understand some of my weaknesses and strengths as a writer, and how I can further improve it.