Writing Process

Most of the papers I have written were literature essays and about three or four research papers. Since I’m used to writing literature papers more and therefore am surrounded with that kind of prose, it tends to rub off on me. I noticed that I usually use a lot of fluff or beat around the bush when I write, instead of going straight to the point. Although literature papers do contain analysis sections where I have to be concise in order to address the point effectively, I usually will end up using long descriptive sentence, similar to the style of the author. For example Jane Finch the author of White Oleander, uses great imagery and diction to describe the setting or a character’s persona carrying on a sentence a few lines longer than normal. She uses imagery to keep the reader wanting more and not writing it like a police report, it was wet, dark and cold, which makes it dry and boring.

Writing detailed sentences is one of my problems. Studying concision in the class has helped me tremendously. I have learned to trim the fat and cut to the chase. Leaving out the extra “stuff”, which makes my papers less confusing and brief. Even though brevity isn’t always good since as a student I’m always worried that I might not make the minimum page requirement. Nonetheless, getting to the point right away without much detail has improved my writing.

One of my first papers that I have written in English while attending MIIS has been a policy assessment. I had to pick a policy, analyze it, and write about it. This was challenging for me because the paper could only be a maximum of two pages. At first, I added too much detail, which ended up making some sections redundant because I was overlapping certain information within the stages. I realized I had to pay close attention to what each stage of the policy process was and strictly stick to its meaning, only writing about that particular stage. Luckily, with the practice we got in class I was able to do a pretty decent job of not going over the maximum page limit and making the paper less detailed and more concise.

Sometimes when I start to write a paper, I will continue on to the body paragraphs even though I have a lousy thesis statement. I feel that I know what I want to argue, but occasionally have a hard time developing a concrete topic sentence. As I get the juices flowing I realize that what I really want to discuss reflects on the body paragraphs and later I go back to the introduction after having a better understanding of what I’m expressing. I would also like to get accustomed to wanting to edit my writing because it is a very important step when working on a paper. I’m getting better at I and the laziness has begun to disappear.