Atenza 1 Kaylene Atenza Professor Wolcott ENC 1101 10/10/12

Writing Self Study

I found that this writing self study project was very useful and it allowed me to better understand myself as a writer, and my writing habits. I chose to do the self study of were I would write a 500 word journal each day for four days. In my Journals I talked about what had occurred during that day, the way I feel about certain things that took place in that specific day, and such things of that nature. Such as Perl did in her writing of The Composing Process of Unskilled College Writers, to help catch any patterns I have done in my transcripts I used a code to see any patterns I created while I wrote and saw how it effected me as a writer. One thing that was different from my research compared to Perls research on Tony was that in my journals I was allowed to write about anything I wanted to as long as I reached the limit of 500 words and I could write it whenever and wherever it was convenient to me; but on the research that was done on Tony he was given a certain time to write it in and a topic, which could put Tony under some pressure since he knew he was only allowed a certain amount of time. The reason behind as to why I chose the self study instead of the week long was because I felt the week long would have put me under to much pressure and the results wouldnt have been as efficient and relevant as the self study would have been; therefore I believe the self study was more suitable for me as a

Atenza 2 writer. A metaphor I feel that best represents my writing process is a flower; because in order to help a flower bloom you first have to plant its seed, then once you've planted the seed you water the seed to help it grow, then once it started to develop it slowly but surly turns into a beautiful flower. The process it takes a flower to grow has many things in common with the way my writing goes. First, I have to plot my idea and exactly what I am going to write about, which is like planting the seed; then once I begin to write I expand it with ideas and other things I believe will help my paper grow; which in comparison is like watering the seed. Then once Im all done editing the paper and giving it the final touches, it is beautiful and I believe a well rounded paper, just like the flower blooming into its beautiful self.

Methodology To obtain the data from my study, I studied myself writing a 500 word journal for four consecutive days. Before I even allowed myself to start writing I realized that I had to be in sweat pants an a t shirt, with socks on, and my hair tied back in a ponytail completely out of my face, also in a quiet setting which either was my room when my roommate was not present, or the common room on my floor when no one was in there and it was quite. The door had to be completely shut and I had to be sitting at the desk or table where I could visually see the door out of the corner of my left eye. Placed exactly to the right of my laptop I would place any kind of snack that would be easy to grab and eat and not distracting; which most of the time the snack would be things such as nuts, which are easy to grab and doesnt take any effort. My surroundings had to be dead silent and the only thing I would allow myself to listen to would be the sound of my pen hitting my paper or me talking out loud of what was going on in my head while I was recording myself on my Iphone. I allowed myself to take however long it took to

Atenza 3 write my journal but I then soon realized each time took me about thirty minutes to complete the 500 word entry. As soon as I began to write my journal entry I pressed record on my Iphone and spoke out loud anything and everything that was running through my head as I was writing my paper, even if it was off topic and didnt pertain to anything I was writing about. Afterwards, I would transcribe the think aloud I recored of myself on my MacBook and type them out and save them. Once the four days had passed and I was done with all four journals; I coded them with the codes my teacher provided us with in class, unlike Perl and Berkentotter which they had to listen to the recordings and watch videos; and in some cases they were unable to understand some of the words their subjects had said making it very difficult to transcribe word by word what was said by the subject. While I was coding my transcripts, I realized that my writing process had a pattern behind it which brought to my attention helped me understand myself as a writer.

Findings My research suggested that many times I began to get off topic I would easily become distracted, such evidence took place in all of my journals but mostly in journal number one and two. As soon as my mind went off topic I would catch myself going off into a different subject that had nothing relevant to do with what I was writing about, then once I realized I was allowing myself to get so easily distracted I would become frustrated with myself. Another pattern I found was that when I was writing out loud or even writing silently I would catch myself using space fillers; the one that I seem to use most commonly was MHMHMHMH. Once I realized I was using space fillers and would start to write out loud I would start to edit my paper; doing things such as fixing my grammar, or my punctation. When I started to get off topic I would ask my self a question and then answer it and start to write about the answer to my question. Which turned out

Atenza 4 to be a trending topic in every single one of my journals. What I found to be most interesting was as soon as I brought up the class College Algebra I became very frustrated and started to complain about the class and how much I hated being in that class because of all the work we were constantly assigned. Leading to the times were when I complained I would then use a space filler too, such as UGHH. When I became lost with ideas on what to write about I would then reach to whatever snack I placed next to my laptop and started to snack until I found something new to write about. When I became distracted sometimes I would find myself saying motivating words to myself to keep on going and to not give up; such as Alright Kaylene, your almost done, keep on going, you can do this. Which then surprisingly put me right back on track. I found a consecutive pattern in each of my journals, that when I would only write silently and not out loud after each individual sentence I would go back and re-read what I just had wrote to make sure it made sense. In doing this I found out that it had a more negative effect on me then positive because when I would allow myself to go back and re-read the sentence I would lose my train of thought and would forget of what I was planning on writing next. With the result of that I realized I started getting into the habit of writing out loud instead of silently because once I heard myself say the sentence out loud it made sense to me and I knew it was in the correct context. Since I had hand written my journals and had not typed them up I would have to go back and count how many words I had written myself. When I would think to myself that I should be close to done with my entrys I would allow myself to count how many words I wrote; but I found that when I was unsatisfied with how many words there where, and was not near the limit of 500 words I would become frustrated and start complaining on how I wasnt in the mood to be writing the journal entry and go off topic and state that I was hungry.

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Codes U- Ums/ Space fillers RR- Rereading SN- Snacking OT- Off topic Q- Asking questions BR- Breaks ED- Correcting grammar/ editing WL- Writing out loud WS- Silently writing DW-Describing the writing you are doing D- Distractions EN- Encouraging (oh! Perfect!) R- Revise (going back and changing content, not grammar, spelling) C-Complaining AQ-Asking then answering questions DC- Discovery (aha!) (oh!) FR- Frustration M- Motivating SE- Searching for a word or phrase Hum Humming TF- Talking to fill space because of think aloud assignment.

Work Cited Perl, Sondra. "The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers." Writing about Writing: A College Reader. By Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 191-214. Print. Ranson, Dominieq. "How Do I Write?" Writing about Writing: A College Reader. By Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 292-98. Print.

Appendices Attached to the back of this paper.

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