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Alexandra Augusto

Professor Gardiakos

ENC 1101

11 October 2021

Unit Two: Writing Processes and Practices

Throughout the entirety of my childhood, my favorite place to be was locked in my room.

It was not because I found comfort in being surrounded by the familiarity of the pictures on my

wall or the view that would greet me when I stood on my tippy toes to look outside my window.

It was quite the opposite actually. I found comfort in turning off all the lights and closing my

curtains, leaving my room pitch black with the exception of the light which illuminated from the

screen of my crappy, grey Acer laptop. I would spend hours of my life staring at that very screen

playing what I still believe to be the best game – Wizard 101 – and letting myself be transported

into the game’s mystical worlds. I look back now and laugh at myself for playing with a

hand-me-down Oxford dictionary beside me to help figure out what was being said by the NPCs

or the other game players. There was no way I would leave the game to search a word up, so how

else could an 8 year old possibly figure out what the word “frabjous” meant?

I thought it was quite genius at the time, and the outcome of spending my childhood

playing online games with a dictionary at my beck and call was that I had developed a peculiar

vocabulary for my age and a love for reading fictional books. My fourth grade papers were

heavily fluffed with words that were incredibly above my reading level and I would always have

my nose stuck in some fantasy book. Anything outside of the fiction genre was hard for me to
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read, and that transferred to my academics. I guess I could say that I am similar to those who say

that they would listen to any music but country. In my case, however, I would read every genre

but nonfiction. School, as a result, became difficult once the content I had read shifted to more

informational and analytical texts. What once started off as “Once upon a time…” became “In

the year 1928…” and I was completely disinterested.

I struggled for a while in paying attention to my assigned readings and figuring out how

to write papers. My improvement only came along after my mom hired my saving grace – my

tutor Sammy! Sammy is the most influential sponsor for my reading and writing literacy that I

have to date. To combat the difficulties I faced because of my then creative-driven mind, I was

taught to imagine scenarios in which my paper would be presented. Argumentative papers would

be presented in a courthouse for a judge to hear my side of the case and informative papers

would be broadcasted across an internationally televised news station for the entire world to

listen to. Anything that would be more interesting than writing a paper for a teacher of mine to

read and never think of again was my only source of motivation.

As I have gotten older and have been exposed to more books and texts outside of my

comfort zone, I no longer need to envision these scenarios – although I still find it very hard to

be truly captured by the content. What has come in place of these scenarios is music. Whenever I

am trying to write a paper, I find it impossible to write without having music to quiet down all

the voices in my head. The two most prominent voices I hear are myself. I have the voice

encouraging me to stop writing and pick up something more fun – which I must admit happened

a lot while writing this paper – and the voice telling me whatever I am writing is not good

enough. If I focus on these voices too much, I develop writer’s block and I am unable to continue
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any further. It is a battle between the angel on my left shoulder telling me that I am doing fine

and I will be happy to get the paper over with and the tempting devil on my right shoulder telling

me my paper sucks and reminding me that a nap is always the more desirable option.

My solution? I have developed a mindset that any progress is good progress. With that

mindset, Anne Lamott’s idea of a child draft ( in which a person just pours everything out onto a

paper for only them to see and revise later) has become the best writing practice I utilize (Lamott

88). There are some good ideas and a lot of really bad ideas, but with the aid of music and having

a visual that my paper is getting filled up mutes all the voices that make me doubt whether I

should continue. @@@transition sentence In Wizard 101 when I had to fight a boss leveled

monster with a terrifying amount of health, it became a duel I was not willing to fight in.

However, after doing research on the boss that I would face and conducting some trial runs to see

what spells were the most effective and which ones weren’t provided me with the best

perspective on how to win the battle. When I had come to the conclusion that it was the best

tactic, I adopted that process for every battle I would face from that point further. If it works, it

works and that is how a child’s draft works in my favor/for me.

I do the research for what I am being assigned and write whatever comes to mind on my

draft. I have found that whenever I produce a child’s draft, it always creates a better topic/paper

outline for me to write about. From then on, I will deduce what works, determine if something

just needs simple rewording, or scrap an entire idea out. At the end of my draft, the paper does

not seem so challenging anymore – just like the boss in the game. All I have to do is work with

what I know will lead to successful results and I will end up victorious. It is a bit humorous for
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me to think that I was under the impression that I had just recently figured out this process, but 8

year old me had already got it all figured out.

For my Unit 1 paper, this was the exact tactic that I used. I have never in my life written

an analytical paper such as the one we had been assigned – especially one about an argument that

has three opposing sides. I was heavily intimidated when I read through the assignment’s

instructions and spent a couple days in my bed just laying in frustration. Even with the topic

being something of my choice (which I am always partial towards), I felt like there was no way I

could complete the assignment successfully. When the deadline for the draft was getting too

close to comfort, I started my writing process. What is the real first step of my writing process?

Writing nothing at all! To further procrastinate dealing with the paper, I “productively

procrastinate” by cleaning my surroundings. I recall even offering my roommates to clean the

bathroom despite it not being my week because of how desperate I was to avoid writing the

paper. Alas, eventually a room cannot get any cleaner than it is and I begrudgingly dragged

myself to my astonishingly uncomfortable dorm chair to start the second step of my writing

process: research and writing my child’s draft.

I stared at the screen until all I could think about was Sex Education (my topic) and I

rejoiced when I had some ideas on how to write the paper. I quickly wrote about how the

rhetorical devices were being used differently in each article and ended up with four pages of

poorly written paragraphs. The next day I woke up and felt much better about my paper. I started

step three – revision – and began to see with clarity the direction of my paper. With many

tweaks, moments of writer’s block, naps, and no memory of the countless songs that played

throughout the process, I have ended up at my final stage: the final draft. Calling this paper
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intimidating was now laughable to me. With the tips I had received during the peer revision, I

was ready to get the paper over with. I cracked my fingers and did a full body stretch, alerting

my roommate with the sound I made, and finished it up.

My favorite part of writing papers is looking back at everything I wrote and turning it in.

I use Google Docs as my platform to write papers and I have grown an obsession with checking

the version history of my paper to admire all the progress I have made. The cherry on top of

turning it in is getting the multicolored confetti displayed on my screen from Webcourse, making

all the hours and energy spent dedicated to the paper worth it (I have to be honest, sometimes I

refresh the page so I can see the confetti again). As a result of the admiration I have towards my

work after putting a lot of energy into it, I am admittedly sensitive when it comes to getting

feedback. I refrain from getting a second opinion because I do not want to hear any critiques

about something I put so much effort in, even if I know the critiques are constructive and

whatever I produced was not the best. It is because of this that I was so hesitant about doing the

peer review. It is also why I had such a hard time writing “first drafts” of papers because after I

finished writing something, once I completed a grammar check I had no intention of ever seeing

it again.

That problem of mine usually surfaced when it came to papers of mine that are written in

a more scholarly fashion in comparison to works that I did for my creative writing class.

Whenever I write, I want readers to see it exactly the way I see it. Sometimes I am able to

capture my vision and emotions into words, or other times – which is usually the majority – I

write like Tony in Sondra Perl’s article by not “stop[ping] to explain the context” from which I

am writing (105). In more “creative” works, I enjoy writing and how I am able to utilize certain
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phrases and ways of expressing/describing things to get my point across. In scholarly works, I

have not mastered how to do so yet and my distaste in writing in this style is sometimes

apparent/visible. I believe that this is an added reason for the apprehension I face for writing

most papers as they are rarely in my best style.

@@@conclusion

Color Key:

@@@____ = Add ____ here

Orange = Keep the sentence but reword it.

Blue = Is this sentence necessary? Could be deleted.

Green = Is there a better word for this that I can use?

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Works Cited

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Dolor, L.I. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh.

New York: Columbia UP, 1998. Print.

Doe, R. John. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh,

1998. Print.