Roybal 1

Irina Roybal

Julia Crisler

Metacognitive Reflection

22 March 2023

Revising my Relationship with Writing

Looking back at my time in Writing 2, it is undeniable that my approach to writing has

changed. Even as I write the hook to this reflection essay, I am consciously fighting my

compulsion to revise my writing before I’ve even typed it out. There will always be this desire to

have a perfect first draft, to adhere to the standards for writing set in high school, and to

otherwise fall into old habits. Over the years, as I mentioned in the first freewrite of the quarter

about our relationship with writing, I’d fallen out of love with the process. Writing had become a

repetitive chore, void of any creativity or self-expression. The monotonous nature of writing

assignments was only exaggerated by restrictive prompts and my use of the same words and

phrases over and over again. Since taking this course, I’ve learned that I need to deliberately

explore new styles and perspectives about the writing process, from the value of several drafts

and sentence structure to peer review, in order to rekindle my love and appreciation for it.

The moment that initially relit my passion for the craft was the examination of the first

draft process in the first few weeks of the course. One reading, Lamott’s “Shitty First Drafts”,

was an eye-opening experience for me. It was reassuring to see a published writer admit that

their first drafts are far from perfect, “It was almost just typing, just making my fingers move.

And the writing would be terrible.” The importance of simply getting information and ideas

down cannot be understated. From personal experience–having implemented spewing thoughts

at my paper–I get work done much faster. It also makes the second draft and revisionary process
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more enjoyable if I actually have something to revise.1 This isn’t to say that the second draft is a

breeze–at least not without some conditioning. It is easy to be overly critical of the “word vomit”

that you unleashed in your first draft. Lamott says, “Quieting these voices is at least half the

battle.” You might think that listening to your inner critic is helpful, but it can do more harm than

good. Completely erasing work and/or restarting makes you lose a lot of the progress and

valuable ideas that you might have had. Lamott recommends something along the lines of

putting all of these critical voices into a jar.2 In terms of my portfolio, although you may now be

reading the final polished draft, as I write this essay, I am struggling to get my unadulterated

thoughts out. Allowing criticism to take over is a hard habit to break, but the benefits of doing so

outweigh the effort required.

After having revised my first draft process, the prompt for Writing Project 1 was the best

way for me to reacquaint myself with writing. My fondest memories of writing in middle and

high school were when we were prompted to write a narrative story. Because this first project

challenged me to create a translation from one genre to another, I realized that I finally had an

outlet to write something that wasn’t argumentatively or informationally based. As such, I chose

to translate one of my favorite songs into a short story. While the reflection certainly posed a

more daunting task, opting to translate something that both interested and excited me made the

process for WP1 much more achievable. When thinking about this time in the course, Bunn’s

“How to Read Like a Writer” comes to mind. It was said best here, “The goal is to carefully

consider the choices the author made and the techniques that he or she used, and then decide

whether you want to make those same choices or use those same techniques in your own

writing.”3This was helpful not only during my translations, but also when reading passages from

1 SBCC. “Using Transitions”. CLRC Writing Center. 1.

2 Bunn, Mike. “How to Read Like a Writer”. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Vol 2 (2011). 73.
3 Reyman, Eva. “A Feminist Take on the Three Course Meal”. Starting Lines (2021). 81-89.
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Starting Lines. The example that really got me thinking outside of the box was “A Feminist Take

on a Three Course Meal” by Eva Reyman. I appreciated how distinct her thought process was

from the other translations that I read. The two genres she had chosen were artfully weaved

together. Despite the fact that it was a strange combination, a feminist paper and a recipe book, it

felt natural and intentional.4 This was my primary motivation to add references to the author of

the song and create intricate details about the origin of some of the lyrics in my translation.

After the first Writing Project was complete, we moved on to more nuanced discussion

about use of sources. I was entirely unaware of the variety of ways that people can incorrectly

use quotes. But, after reading Stedman’s “Annoying Ways People Use Sources”, I realized that I

was guilty of several of their so-called “annoyances”. In particular, this article made me realize

that I have a really hard time seamlessly introducing quotations that I use in my writing, instead

dropping them on the reader out of nowhere, otherwise known as “armadillo roadkill”. In

general, I tend to have choppy transitions, more focused on the content rather than the fluidity.5

The Transitions handout, courtesy of SBCC, offered some great ideas on how to create said

transitions, such as incorporating keywords sentence-to-sentence and using terms that signify a

change in topic, such as “such as”.6After receiving feedback from Professor Crisler about my

lack of proficiency in these areas of my writing in regards to WP1, I realized that I would need to

revise my approach to writing.

A step that was briefly stressed in K-12 was second and third drafts, however I never

took this step seriously. I was used to my first draft being “good enough”, provided I made some

minor syntactic changes. After receiving a decent amount of criticism on WP1 and during the

4 Crisler, Julia. “Apostrophe Lecture”. Writing 2. Class lecture at UCSB, Santa Barbara, CA, March 13, 2023.
5 Young, Vershawn Ashanti. “Should Writers Use They Own English?”. Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol 12,
Issue 1 (2010). 112.
6 Lamott, Anne. “Shitty First Drafts”. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994). 24.
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Reader Response of my Writing Project 2 draft, I realized that there is value in peer-review and

at times, dramatically reshaping one's draft. As much as we are critical of ourselves, there is

always some level of ego that we also must come to terms with. Through this process, I have

discovered that there is always room for improvement. Even small changes can make a

significant difference in the clarity and impact of a piece of writing. As a result, I am now

committed to dedicating the necessary time and effort to refining my work, knowing that the end

result will be a more compelling and successful composition.

Changes don’t always have to be large either. After hearing the presentation about the

apostrophe on March 13th, I realized that a singular character change can wildly change the way

your writing is perceived. Ineffective use of syntax could result in confusion and distract from

the content itself.7 Now, I carefully reread my writing and have peers review my sentence

structure in order to ensure that these characters aren’t obscuring my message.

However, it is important to note that there isn’t inherently a right or wrong way to write.

Punctuation can be a form of creativity and self-expression, as can choices to add confusion or

repetition. Furthermore, using dialects familiar to you is another way to push normative

boundaries. The article titled “Should Writers Use They Own English?” By Vershawn Young put

it best: “One set of rules that people be applyin to everybody’s dialects leads to perceptions that

writers need ‘remedial training’ or that speakers of dialects are dumb.” Young’s philosophy that

individuals should be free to speak in their own dialect is frowned upon by conventional

academics. However, I would argue that the assertion that one way of phrasing is objectively

better than another is false. There is a whole world of exploration to be made by inserting

7 Lamott, “Shitty First Drafts”. 26.

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colloquial flair through the lens of academic writing.8 I considered this realization as I began to

tackle my portfolio: would I dare make such stylistic changes to my essays?

When I sat down to revise my work, feelings of foreboding washed over me. I pondered

if I would be able to implement all of the various writing techniques into my new final drafts.

One step that made such a daunting task a little more manageable were the group highlighter

revisions. It’s easy to mindlessly highlight and not understand the purpose of such meticulous

work but for my portfolio, I resolved that I would take what I learned from previous workshops

seriously and see what my writing had to gain. I noticed that I tended to use non-specific

pronouns and would forget to add the aforementioned transitions between paragraphs. An essay

is supposed to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, but as they stood, my essays were mostly

ambiguous collections of thoughts, brought together loosely by a rocky introduction and

conclusion.9 These tips were especially helpful for my matrices, giving me quite a bit of material

to work with in the rewriting process. The highlighting exercise was perhaps the most useful for

me of any activity we have done, and is something I will employ with any future writing

assignment.

As a whole, this course helped me diagnose ailments that my writing process suffered

from, problems that I wasn’t even aware of initially. By embracing new techniques and

perspectives, such as accepting the given messiness of a first draft, looking for inspiration from

other works of writing, proper use of sources, and pushing the boundaries of what is considered

“academic”, I’ve learned to appreciate academic writing once more. Instead of striving for

syntactic perfection in my first draft, my priority is now the content itself. Punctuation and order

of ideas comes second, and is only employed to aid in conveying said content to the reader,

8 Stedman, Kyle D. “Annoying Ways People Use Sources”. Writing Spaces: Reading on Writing, Vol 2 (2011). 244.
9 Crisler, Julia. “Highlighter Revisions”. Writing 2. Class lecture at UCSB, Santa Barbara, CA, February 22, 2023.
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rather than distracting from it. These realizations have not only made my writing better, but more

enjoyable for me to complete. Writing 2 has taught me that writing is a dynamic and evolving

process. Instead of looking to future writing projects with dread, I welcome the possibilities that

they present.

Works Cited

Bunn, Mike. “How to Read Like a Writer”. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Vol 2 (2011):
71-86.

Crisler, Julia. “Apostrophe Lecture”. Writing 2. Class lecture at UCSB, Santa Barbara, CA,
March 13, 2023.

Crisler, Julia. “Highlighter Revisions”. Writing 2. Class lecture at UCSB, Santa Barbara, CA,
February 22, 2023.

Lamott, Anne. “Shitty First Drafts”. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994):
21-27.

Reyman, Eva. “A Feminist Take on the Three Course Meal”. Starting Lines (2021): 81-89.

SBCC. “Using Transitions”. CLRC Writing Center: 1-2.

Stedman, Kyle D. “Annoying Ways People Use Sources”. Writing Spaces: Reading on Writing,
Vol 2 (2011): 242-256.

Young, Vershawn Ashanti. “Should Writers Use They Own English?”. Iowa Journal of Cultural
Studies, Vol 12, Issue 1 (2010): 110-118.
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