Maria Diaz 1

Writing 2
03-21-23

Considerations
During this quarter I found myself focusing more on what I wanted to achieve in my

writing than what I wanted to write. This comparison is made not because I think I have

to write for others, but because I want my ideas to be expressed in a way that I'm able

to say what I want while disregarding what I don't need. I learned to revise my work in a

way that is not only choosing synonyms or repetitive phrases but to focus on what I

want to give to my audience.

Lectures were a source of information and growth for me. I was able to learn a lot about

things in writing because of the small tips of the day that were given in class. I for sure

remember to check my tense changes in writing now just in case I end up changing

them suddenly. Another source of help was the long explanations and analysis on

course material and specific points on the writing process. I learned to revise my and

other people’s work more effectively and to make my own writing focus on the audience

while also keeping them interested in what I’m writing about. I also learned to structure

my work in better ways. I think this was necessary for me as I like to write for

entertainment but I never found myself really interested in reading what I wrote myself,

so I thought other people would feel bored in reading my writing too. I also found myself

doing better structures on my notes for other classes and having better analysis in my

responses to problem sets. With this said, I think I have a better understanding of what I

was doing wrong and that I should learn about writing more in my free time.
 2

With course materials I learned many different ways in which my writing could improve.

Elbow's Teaching two kinds of genres, may be the reading that I found the most

interesting and helpful in realizing that my writing should be both a floating set of ideas

but should morph into being “conscious, direct, [and] controlled thinking (1).” I made

many considerations while revising WP1 and WP2, what tenses to use, what to take

out, modify, leave in, expand or shrink, etc. These changes were deliberated and

thought over for some time. I felt bad at leaving good ideas behind but I found myself

liking those changes that gave more focus to the themes I was touching. My first drafts

were like the ones talked about in Shitty First Drafts from Anne Lamott, they were my

“childlike part of [me]”(1) that I let write my “voices and visions”(1) onto the paper, to

then become full ideas and sentences. Annoying ways people use sources by Kyle D.

Stedman made me realize unconscious mistakes I make when using resources. It made

me check If I had become an Armadillo roadkill or if I was Dating Spiderman, I’m not

completely sure I managed to avoid any of the mistakes talked about in the reading but

if I missed one, it was very likely to be one of these two.

In WP1 I was able to learn about structure, I learned to show the audience what my

main points were and I kept myself from writing unrelated things except when doing

deliberate exposition. For example, in the Podcast of Daniel, I deliberately added some

interaction moments between Audience and Daniel, “(DAN to Audience): Today we

have a very special guest with us (1).” A common thing on podcasts and perfect for the

translation even if it didn’t add anything to the main theme. Similarly to how some

friends in The Writing Report have small conversations with little new information.
 3

In WP2 I was able to learn about listening to a discourse community and showing what I

learned to a new audience. At the same time my biggest weakness was more evident

for me and for other readers too, the length of my writing. Something I need to work on

from now on. Besides that I learned that I should focus more on being concise with my

ideas and to further expand my vocabulary knowledge.

This portfolio is the results of my work in Writing 2, it contains not only what I knew how

to do previously, but also many of the techniques that I learned throughout the course

from the first to the last article and from many tips given to us during lecture. WP1 is my

first work in which I investigated a theme and changed its genre to reach other types of

audiences. In WP2 I entered a conversation, a discourse community, and from many of

the perspectives I read I made a dialogue between them with the positions they

established in their articles. These works are not only a representation of what I did in

the course, but are the result of many considerations that include small parts and big

parts of things I learned in Writing 2 that now make me a different writer than before.

Bibliography

Elbow, Peter. “Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking” Embracing contraries: Explorations in

Learning and Teaching, 1986.

Lamott, Anne. “Shitty First Draft” Bird by Bird, 1994.

Stedman, Kyle D. “Annoying Ways People Use Sources” Writing Spaces 2011.
Annoying Ways People Use Sources – Writing Spaces

Diaz, Maria. “Podcast of Daniel #32” 2023.