Ronald Murphy

Professor MacDonald

English 11000

7 December 2021

Theory of Writing

            There is a saying, “no two people are the same”, this saying could not be any truer for writing. From writing styles to genre preference no two people will write the same. There are some people who take longer than others to finish writing assignments and others who take longer researching than writing the actual assignment. The theory of writing is the idea that everyone has their own way of writing and is tailored to fit your needs as the writer. In this paper, I will be dissecting my theory of writing piece by piece analyzing writing assignments that I have done for my first college English class. Before jumping into my theory of writing there is some important backstory about my writing history which I think is essential to how I write today.

            For high school, I attended two different schools each for two years. At my first school, I did not have to write very long papers, if a 2-page paper was assigned the whole class would complain. Thus, the way that I wrote reflected these short assignments, very straight to the point, and I would not expand on my thoughts rather just answer the question enough to just give the minimum amount of information required. It was not until I transferred during my junior year that I truly began my ‘writing career’. The school that I went to had a portfolio class separate from the English department and focus on science for my junior year. We would go over trig concepts, do projects based on the concepts, and then we would write an 8-page paper based on the project. The teacher had warned us that our lowest grade in the class would be the first paper that we wrote. He did not say that he was going to grade it any harsher than the rest of the assignments rather, since we were not familiar with the format of the paper we would not fully understand how to elaborate on the information. He was right, on my first paper in that class I received a 78, I was not happy to say the least. There was an 8-page minimum which included space for the graph, and I was still struggling to reach the minimum. On the final paper of that class, I received an 88 with a paper that ended up being 10 pages long, what changed? For starters, my understanding of what was required of me in the class changed, i.e., feedback. In every single class that I take, I am under the impression that the first assignment will be the one with the lowest grade, especially a writing class. The purpose of this story is to show that my theory of writing did not start in college rather it took time to build it and is still being built ever since my high school years. There is obviously a process that I go through when I am given a prompt which I will share next.

            The most difficult thing for a writer to do is to stay focused and organized, when writing your mind becomes flooded with ideas which you are just itching to get onto the paper. The urge to get your information onto the paper as fast as possible is real and it can be easy to miss information that was required to be included. I like to keep myself organized when writing by having a sticky note app on my computer opened and listing all of the information that I want to include bulleted, as I include the information, I start crossing it off the list. I do this with every single paper that I have written, since high school. The reasoning behind this is my teacher junior year would hand out a sheet with the prompt bulleting all the information required. Human beings learn from people around them, and my teacher’s junior year has played a large factor into my writing process. Once the information is bulleted, I would go and search for the evidence that I need to write my paper which is a process of its own.

            At CCNY we are fortunate enough to have an online database of the books in the CUNY system and of many articles peer-reviewed work. The database makes searching for sources and evidence easier than ever, the ability to search keywords and have a hyper-specific advanced search. I can only imagine the pain that it must have been to write a paper manually scanning through a text, today all you must do is a word search on the computer. The Ctrl + F function on the computer scans the text for any words that you typed in the search bar. This came in handy when researching my topic for Module 2 which talked about turbochargers and electric cars. These sources are information intense and are daunting to read if you do not have background knowledge on the topic. Thankfully I had background information on the topic, and I also have the word search ability. After I have my quotes and important information to remember I would put it on a word document with the citation for that source above so that all I need to do is copy and paste quotes and the citations. Gathering accurate information in relation to the prompt is important to do before writing, in my opinion. If you are writing the paper and want to add quotes that were not gathered in the beginning with all of the other information, the new quote could interfere with the layout of the paper and conflict with other information in the paper. After I have gathered my information, citations, and all, I move on to the layout of my paper.

The layout of the paper is just as important to the overall grade as is the information, if your information is not laid out effectively then your audience will have to work overtime to understand your message. Prior to college, I was not very concerned with layout, however, when writing my paper, I needed to come up with the most effective way to display my information, I found that the use of subtitles is my preferred style. In Module 2, we needed a model essay for our Inquiry-Based paper, looking at an article by the New York Times during class about at-home covid tests I found that subtitles made precise information locating easy. When forming the layout of my essay I am weary of the information that I put in the beginning and how the information is grouped. In the beginning, I like to add an anecdote that I can return to later helping me to explain concepts in a way that keeps the reader engaged. The use of subtitles is prevalent in my work since the ability to keep the gist of the section is fresh in the reader’s mind. Organization is key especially when writing, without organization there are just words on a page. Once the layout is made and the information is organized, I work on the actual writing aspect of the paper.

            Writing the actual paper is probably one of the most difficult parts of the writing process. After spending countless hours doing all the backstage work you then need to pack everything together for the reader with a bow on top. This time-consuming part of writing is writing the paper for this I have a simple solution that I learned in high school. My secret to writing, especially long papers, is time management. If I need to write an 8-page paper in 4 days my solution would be 2 pages per day, finishing it on time and not leaving the paper to be done all in one day. Spacing out the work that I do per day allows for me to be productive in other areas of my life and be less resistant to procrastination. When you break down assignments into small tasks you tend to finish them without being tired and the work is of better quality. The more time that you spend on the writing the better the quality and less proofreading is needed. When I am writing I like to have sticky notes with the evidence that I am using opened on the desktop. The evidence that I am using when on the sticky notes is especially useful when I add an analysis of the information on the sticky note. The introduction and conclusion of what I am writing are some of the areas that I have struggled with ever since I was in grade school, the introduction is not as much as the conclusion. The conclusion is always hard because I have already said everything that I want to say, I was always taught that the conclusion is supposed to summarize your paper. Summarizing the paper at the end does not feel natural to me yet and this is a perfect example of how my writing process to this day is still changing and evolving. After I am done writing the paper, meaning my first draft I move on to proofreading and editing my paper.

            The proofreading process is just as important as collecting information and the actual writing of the paper. Humans are not perfect and so when we are writing there are flaws such as grammatical mistakes or sentences not flowing correctly. The proofreading process can sometimes be just if the writing of the paper, reading the paper over multiple times looking for the slightest of imperfections can be a grueling process. During proofreading I like to look at my layout to see if I followed it, you could easily get caught up in writing without realizing that you threw off the layout completely. There are also instances where you may have too large of a quote, you do not need the entire quote, so you cut it to fit your criteria. Looking for inconsistencies in the paper is also crucial, and inconsistent paper is hard for the audience to understand what is being said. Once I feel that my paper has been overlooked and I am confident in the quality of it, I will proceed to turn it in. Throughout the semester I have written papers and it is interesting to see how I have progressed in my writing.

            In my opinion Module 1 was the hardest assignment that I have had all year is mainly since this was not your typical essay. From what I understood from the assignment I was to analyze the rhetorical situation of the article. I chose to write about Columbus and his impact on the Native Americans since I am from the Dominican Republic I feel very strongly about this topic, Columbus first arrived in the Dominican Republic and this was the country that was most impacted by his first visit. At first, I misunderstood the prompt believing I was to write about the information that I found, rather I was to write about the genre, audience, and the language that the author used to get his/her message across. The following is a quote from my introductory paragraph in my Module 1 rough draft, “In this essay, I will be explaining how the Natives were treating changing their ecosystem, how the arrival of Columbus decimated the Natives, how Columbus and his crew also completely altered the state of a whole river in the island of Hispaniola, and how Columbus is viewed as a hero today but should be viewed as a genocidal maniac.”. As I previously stated I did not fully understand the prompt seeing as I was very different from what I am used to doing, which would be answering a question that is posed rather than analyzing the rhetorical situation. After my student-teacher conference, my professor explained to me the mistake that I made, subsequently I proceed to correct the mistake. After my first draft I needed to do a complete overhaul of my paper and the last sentence of my introductory paragraph is, “. In this paper I will be analyzing the rhetorical situation of articles written about Native Americans and their land use, Columbus and his land use”. As shown by the quote from my paper after meeting with my professor and finding out what I needed to analyze I was able to home in on what the prompt asked of me. Module 1 was the biggest learning curve in college for me the prompt being so different from what I am used to writing threw me off and it shows looking at my rough draft compared to my final draft. Proofreading work is one of the processes that is taken when writing and I was fortunate enough that my professor was able to look at my work help me through my problem. The second module that I did for my English class this semester was more of a traditional research paper, this put my writing process to the test.

            For Module 2, the assignment was simple, write an 8–10-page research paper using popular media sources and using academic sources. An academic source is one that has been peer-reviewed, I chose to look in the database for my academic sources, the database tells you whether a piece of literature is peer-reviewed. From the research process to the writing of the paper the whole assignment was time-consuming, finding enough information for a research paper is not easy. There were many hurdles to jump through while researching, finding specific information in an academic source is difficult if you do not understand the information that is being spoken about. Thankfully I have a significant amount of background knowledge on turbochargers and electric cars so reading the sources was bearable. When writing a research paper, it is key that you talk about every concept that is associated with your topic and this is exactly what I did. Explaining how turbochargers worked and their impact on the environment was just the tip of the iceberg, I needed to speak about how a traditional engine worked for my audience to understand how turbochargers and electric cars work. Organizing the information was just as grueling as the research. My research itself could have passed for a college paper, each piece of evidence that I was going to use in my paper had a thorough explanation. The reasoning behind a thorough explanation for each piece of evidence on my research sheet is because with such a scientific topic it can get complicated, losing yourself in your evidence is the last thing you want while writing. Once the research process was completed, I needed to move on to the writing of the paper.

            When looking at the actual writing of the research paper time management was key, taking my time with the structure of my paragraphs was essential. I could not make a paragraph that spoke about how turbochargers worked including how electric cars worked, my reader would just become confused. I decided to use subtitles to best organize my information, one section would talk about how turbochargers worked and the other would talk about the environmental effects of turbochargers. Once I knew how I would lay out the information I needed to figure out a way to make it relatable to the reader, using analogies has always been my go-to and continues to be my go-to. When explaining how a turbocharger worked, I decided to use an analogy to open the section up, “The same way that 10-speed bicycle allows for the rider to go up hills better turbochargers help smaller engines have enough power to make a car viable.” Using such a basic and universal analogy, a bicycle, this introduction to the topic reassures the reader that the topic is simple and understandable. When it came to the diagrams that I included in the paper I made sure that I explained everything that was labeled, when a reader is left with questions after reading your research paper you know something is wrong. During this assignment time management was crucial, the length of the assignment made it so that everything could not be done in one day. The final writing assignment of the class, Module 3, was interesting in that an essay did not have to be written rather we had to explore different genres that would help us get our point across.

            The use of different genres can help get our message across to our intended audience better than other genres. For example, if I want to sell my car, I will not write a research paper about my car rather I would make flyers and post them around town. In the assignment we were to use two genres that would help us get our message across, I chose to talk about forced induction and my audience being interested in installing the system on their car. As previously stated, the layout is an essential step in writing anything, for the genres that I chose, a website and a presentation, the layout is everything. For my website I chose to use different menus that would help to organize the information for the reader, my reasoning is that this is as close as I could get to subtitles on the website without making it a blog post. Writing for the website was quite tricky, I had to look at other websites and how they organized the information in the writing to draw ideas. The second genre that I chose was a presentation, this was easier to do because it brought me back to my early days of writing. The information on the slides was short and concise there were no long paragraphs rather it was bullet points with information that the presenter would have as talking points. The genre assignment opened my eyes to the different types of writing that I can do and the different ways that I can get my message across, it does not always have to be an essay.

            So, what is my theory of writing? To everything there is a process same goes for writing, first comes the learning curve then it’s smooth sailing. It can not be overstated, organization is key, if you are not organized you become unproductive. From the moment we are born we have a ‘game plan’, the same goes for writing, from the moment that the prompt is handed over you need a ‘game plan’. Not everyone will go through the same process that I will but here is what I do when given a prompt; First, I need to gather and organize any information that I will be using for writing, next, I need to figure out a layout for my writing knowing the order that the information goes in will assist me in transitional sentences, finally when writing the paper I will give my self ample time to write and review the paper if possible have a peer review or speak with a teacher about the paper. I have come a long way from my one-page essay freshman and sophomore year in high school, since junior year in high school I have worked on my writing and even in college I have been trying to figure out the perfect formula, my theory of writing will change as I continue my academic journey evolving just as I do as a human being.