Putting my pen to paper.

My writing process consists of gathering information and then finding a way to make myself put thoghts down on paper. Once I have my fingers rolling I will just keep typing. Often this means that I will not use half of what I write, but at least i can use the other half. I will then read over my first draft to see the key ideas that need further explanation and the ideas that make the paper strong. Once I have determined what to keep and what to toss, I make more drafts. This chisel at my rough ideas to make it into a more suitable paper.

My weakness as a writer is wordiness. I have written papers where I have thrown out almost two pages of writing because it wordy information that was not needed. This is one of the areas I need improvement on, which will drastically strengthen my writing. I also have room for improvement with my grammar. I occasionally make these mistakes and I am upset every time that I do.

It is difficult to determine my exact strength with writing. I am a science major so I have never boasted of my writing. However, I feel that because I have never been the greatest at writing I have developed a strong habit of revising my drafts. The best paper I have ever written must have had more than ten drafts. The reason I call this a strength is because it requires diligence to revise a paper that many times. It is a strength to avoid the high school routine of writing the paper the night before it is due.

From the reading I learned how important it is to just start writing. It is natural to find things to do that are not writing, but if I want to make any progress I need to focus on starting. From reading the insite material I realized how important it is to understand the genre. This will shape the convention of my writing to tailor it to the readers.