Steven Munoz

Jan Rieman

English 1101 X

March 17, 2010

Posing and Composing Processes of Writing

Chapter one in “Writing Conventions” by Zhan Lu and Horner discussed many ways on

improving your writing. It covered many points from processing your paper, to writing your

thesis, to finding many resources, and even touched on the audience your writing too. All these

points are very important when writing a paper and without these you can never get a well

written paper. I feel that after reading this that I can write a much better paper then I have in the

past and anyone else who does, can do the same. Even though they explain the writing process

as a messy, complex recursive, unpredictable, highly unstable process, they do a very good job

of shaping it up.

The first few pages talked about how to get a paper started, and how to process a paper.

Some examples are: jotting down some notes, write a draft on a computer and send it to a friend

for review, and writing on paper and then make changes when re writing it online. Although

your first draft will not look anything like your final its always good to review your first draft

many times. In the chapter they explain how hard it is for writers to drift away from their first

draft and usually rewriting your work tends to help it. They say it helps when you rewrite it

because you find mistakes in your paper when your rewrite your work and you fix them right

away, the more you write the more mistakes you find and the less your first draft looks like your

final.

In this chapter Lu and Horner also discuss different ways to get resources in this section

such as; friends, roommates, library, and the internet. One resource though that caught my eye

though was past experiences. I never knew that past experiences could be such a vital resource

to your paper as explained in the book. The book explains them as a reliable resource, and they

have different degrees of access to various resources on particular writing occasions. I believe

this means that each time you are given a paper to write you have a different past experience that

you can relate to the paper and that is why they vary based on particular writing occasions.

Another point that they covered that I liked reading about was when they talked about

thesis statements. Even though it is only a sentence it shapes up your whole entire paper. I

usually have trouble with this and after reading I don’t think I’ll have any more trouble. They

talk about in the book that usually you will change your thesis statement many times and also

there is more than one way to get it across. One way they talk about your thesis statement is

forming your paper first and then searching amongst the words in your paper and base your

thesis around that. I think I might try this next time as it seems like a great idea. If the info is

already there why not base your thesis off that then base the whole paper off one sentence.

On further note another great topic they touched on was free writing. I think free writing

is a great activity and they seem to agree. When I free write I usually tend to take risks and see

how they work out for future references. I think if you don’t get all your ideas that you have out

in your head that they might come out when you’re writing a paper and sometimes that’s not the

best thing to do, if that happens you might go off topic and then just completely forget about the

paper on hand and trash your paper.

After reading this chapter I do believe that the writing process is a very, messy, complex

recursive, unpredictable, highly unstable process, but Lu and Horner did a great job in shaping it

up. They seem to just hit every point on the writing process and in such good detail and honesty.

They have made me think about my future writing projects and how I can improve my writing

skills. I have never read such well written article on processing in my life and think that this can

help just about anyone.

Self Assessment

My point for my paper that I am trying to get across is that although the writing process is very

complex, Lu and Horner do a very good job of explaining it. I also feel that it is one of the best

articles I have ever read that involves writing processes. At first I think it would be a little

difficult to write on this but it was such a well written article that it was not hard at all. I really

would like to use this for my portfolio and I feel it still needs some work. For some reason I feel

that it wasn’t a well written paper but got my point across as I stated above. Great article though.

Steven,

I’m glad that you appreciated the chapter and have found a paper that you want to work

on further for your portfolio. Your excitement about the chapter’s contents is clear!

Since you want to work on this paper for your portfolio, the first step to revision is to

know that you can expand this as needed and go beyond the 700 word limit, so if there were

ideas you had to leave out because of space, you can include them again if you like. One aspect

I’d like you to develop more throughout is the idea you present in your thesis about writing being

a “ messy, complex recursive, unpredictable, highly unstable process.” Think about how you can

show this idea in your paper, maybe using the examples that you have here or adding some more.

Continue to think about how what’s in the chapter relates to your own writing experiences as

well. So start revising and then let’s go over your next draft together when it’s ready.

Dr. Rieman,

Thank you for the helpful tips on completing my paper, I plan on revising this asap. I plan on

expanding on my ideas as well but not as much. I like the idea of keeping it nice and short like

this paper was suppose to be because I feel as if I can get my point across easier. But if its

required 700 words or more I can hit that. I am a little confused on how to show my idea as you

explained above about the messy, complex statement made in my paper so I plan on talking to

you about that. Thanks again

Steven munoz