Vishvak Sriram - vsriram@ucsb.

edu

March 13th 2021

Kristen Thomas-McGill

Writing 2

Dear Kristen,

There are so many things I have learned from this class, and I can say with confidence that my

writing has changed for the better. More than anything that has changed though is my mindset

about writing. Writing and my whole process when completing a written assignment has

completely changed. It has gone from a way of thinking that was so close minded and

academically geared to something I like to think is much more creative.

There is a document that I had liked to refer to in my assignments throughout this course and this

document is the “Should Writers Use They Own English?”. As I am typing this, my computer is

already trying to correct the title of this piece to “their”, and that right there is a prime example

of what this document talks about. Ashanti Young wants to break this typical form of writing that

everyone conforms to and instead “we all should know everybody’s dialect, at least as many as

we can, and be open to the mix of them in oral and written communication.”(2010, Young) Why

be forced to use only one specific way of English? It clearly limits creativity and freeness in

one’s writing and opening oneself up to a more personal way of using English creates work that

is much more creative and unique. I could still understand Young’s diction though it was written

in a way that is almost never seen in academic writing. I didn’t go as extreme as Young does in
his work, but in WP2 I was definitely able to express some of that personal English. I was able to

translate academic content into a way that I spoke on a day to day basis. I text people all the time

so it was almost like taking all these articulate, professional texts and just texting it to myself. I

digested the academic content and dumbed it down to text form and in doing so, I actually gained

a better understanding of the academic text itself. I had a moment of self reflection to realize that

I shouldn't be limiting my creativity as the character in my story Song says. I should have

confidence in my writing even when it wasn’t strictly following the prompt.

With WP2, I did not make nearly as many changes as I did with WP1. I enjoyed completing

WP2 and generally when I enjoy the assignment, I am able to express myself creatively while

also completing the prompt. Some of the main changes I made was more just to help make my

narrative flow better and capture points from the academic writings in a more precise way. An

example of this would be how at times, my narrative sounded scripted to the point where it was

obvious it was for the purpose of an assignment. I know that’s the whole point of this

assignment, but I really wanted to make it sound like an actual text conversation and not

something extremely scripted. That’s where the creative process comes in and I can be more

unique in my WP2, as I could have just completed what was asked of me in translation but that

takes away the fun.

WP2 was a lot later in the quarter than WP1, and because of this I made a lot more changes to

WP1. For my revisal of WP1, I thought back to the Lamott reading we had: “the first draft is the

child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no

one is going to see it and that you can shape it later.”(1994, Lamott) When I came back to WP1, I
felt like I was looking at a first draft once again. There were so many things I wanted to change.

There were some important mechanics changes like my improper use of tense as you had

mentioned in our meeting, but there were also changes to my narrative itself. I didn’t see it as

clearly then, but my WP1 sounded very scripted. The organization could have been improved,

the narrative sounded less like a narrative and more like a retelling of events, and there were

moments where I would state fitness information that didn’t follow the flow of the story. There

would be random fitness facts riddled in the writing. The issue was, I wanted to put this

information into the project but I had not done it in a way that made it follow the natural path of

the story. The second time around, I made these changes and tried to create a story that actually

made more sense. You’ll notice a lot of this throughout the entirety of the revised WP1 as I

changed a lot of the diction itself to make it sound more like a children’s book.

Finally I want to talk about reflection as a whole for this class and how my writing style has

changed. Any reflection assignment “asks you to think about your own thinking.”(2010, Giles)

As I write my reflections on WP1 and WP2 and think about all the mistakes and improvements I

have made as a writer, I can see that most of these improvements came from the drastic change

in my thinking process. The way I used to write, I would write for a paper and then come back to

it like twenty times over and over and keep picking at it. I would always find that I was never

confident enough to turn it in until I was forced to. I can’t say that I am fully confident now, but

with my new approach to writing, it has helped immensely in my confidence. I now try to put my

thoughts into writing in the most natural way possible when it comes to a first draft. The second

draft is where I think more about the prompt and other aspects of the assignment that I need to

check off. Thinking about ticking off all the boxes when writing honestly makes for bad writing,
at least in my case. The less I stress about making sure I hit all the criteria of the prompt, the

better my writing sounds. I can always come back to my writing to ensure that I hit the criteria of

the prompt after my first or second run at the assignment. If there’s anything I still want to

improve on, it’s my ability to write confidently. I wish to be able to have more confidence in my

writing and with that more creativity in my writing. I know that with confidence, as is true with

many other things aside from writing, comes better content.

Sincerely,

Vishvak Sriram
 Works Cited

Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird. Anchor Books, 1997.

Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Parlor Press, 2020.

Young, Vershawn Ashanti. “Should Writers Use They Own English?” Writing Centers and the

New Racism, pp. 61–72., doi:10.2307/j.ctt4cgk6s.7.