You did it! You submitted a revised draft of a major writing project for this course. Feel good about it.
Hopefully, you changed quite a bit to align with what you wanted to do better in the piece compared to what you did in the first draft. I hope you also consulted the Revision Plan Guidelines (in 9/17 lesson plan and also in Blackboard in Course Documents) and feedback you got on the first draft.
Now that it is done, though, let’s take a moment to think about what you did and where you are going next.
There are two tasks to do on this page.
First, comment below on what you were trying to do in your revision:
- Where did you focus your energy most? What were you trying to differently in the most drastic way of all the changes you made? Why? How did you do that? How did you feel about it?
- What do you love most about this revision? What are you most proud of?
- What helped you the most when revising? (e.g., the Liao reading or criteria, models of memoir essays, feedback from your Writing Group, a realization you had, how you structured a Writing Session). Be specific! (e.g., mention a specific comment from a person in your Writing Group)
Second, go to our Slack workspace and in the #writing-practice-and-process channel, post about the following:
- Talk about 2-3 goals that you would like to work on for your writing. Interpret this however you’d like. It can be related to anything about writing–style level concerns, organization, argument, using examples, your writing process, your writing practice, etc. Be specific!!!!!!!!! (say more than just picking 2-3 of the things I just listed and copy/pasting them)
- Respond to others! Read previous posts before you write your own post. If you notice someone has a similar post, comment directly to them and expand on their points if you had similar goals. Prioritize talking about your goals that way rather than formally listing all of your goals.
Once you have completed these two tasks, click on the “Click here to continue” button below.
I focused mostly on the format of my narrative while revising it mostly, I was trying to accomplish the memoir style that I had seen in examples we had been given. It was not that difficult to make this change, and I think It was able to add to the work and looked better than the typical 5 paragraph essay I had before.
I think the best part of the revision, is how I was able to add more key details that i thought were important to me at least.
The memoir essays helped me the most personally and without them I would have probably been lost on what to achieve.
I mostly focused on two areas in my revision. The first was readability, with regards to structure and the second was incorporating more details to make it feel more personal. I felt that the feedback from the writing group was very helpful on both points because while I did have a lot to say on the topic I wrote about, I didn’t organize it in the best way and didn’t expand on points that I needed to.
I think the most satisfying thing about it was interweaving facts, examples, observations, and opinions. It wasn’t too rigid but I felt that it flowed more naturally because the topic is so relevant to everyone.
I worked on a lot of my sentence structure and how I worded my thoughts. I tried to show more of my ideas in my writing and give evidence, rather than just leaving my thoughts without much context. I loved reading my piece once it was finished the most. I am most proud of how my thoughts came full circle and were very well written (in my opinion). My group partner’s thoughts and ideas helped me the most when revising. Their criticism helped shape my piece.
Where did you focus your energy most? What were you trying to differently in the most drastic way of all the changes you made? Why? How did you do that? How did you feel about it?
I focused the most on elaborating on the experiences I told in my essay. There were some parts where I was vague in conveying what I meant to convey. Also, there was a word or two that I kind of just threw on there without explaining why I chose that word. For example, I talked about how Chinese calligraphy was “spiritual,” but didn’t explain why that was in my first draft.
The part of the revision that I enjoy was when I elaborated on the details. During that process, I realized that my knowledge in the subject just made everything come together quickly. I was also writing with a sense of pride in my linguistic identity, I felt that it was gratifying to share my experiences with my readers.
What helped me most was the feedback I got from my team members as well as from Professor Dan. They pin pointed the adjustments I needed to make and made it easier for me to target and fix.
For my revision, I mostly focused on going more in depth with my narrative. I wanted to show my reader exactly what I went through growing up by giving more detail. There were many times in my first draft where I would explain certain moments with no detail on how it affected me and my identity. I loved that I was able to open up and show how much I really struggled with my identity. The feedback from my writing group and Professor Libertz actually helped a lot. I took into consideration what they said and included it in my revision. Their comments showed me what I could improve on, but in the nicest way possible which was greatly appreciated.
In my revision, I focused mostly in improving the overall harmony of my text, the connection between paragraphs and my central idea. The most drastic change I made was adjusting the climax/development paragraphs of my story. I replaced it with something that made more sense around the central idea of my text. Im proud that I was (apparently) able to reformulate my introduction. When revising, mapping a clear image of what I wanted to change was helpful as well as a brainstorm of ideas to switch the content I wanted gone.
My main goal with my revisions was to make my story more personal. To do this, I had to talk more about my feelings in responce to the things that had happened to me. I also had to include more insight in general and explain my perspective more. I’m proud of this revision because I think it gave the overall essay a greter sense of importance. I felt like I was writing to convey my feelings rather than just being forced to write a literacy narrative for class. I think the thing that helped me most were the open ended questions from my peers and from you; they allowed me to add more depth to my story.
During my revision I focused my energy on adding more vivid and descriptive details to the initial draft to make the writing more expressive of my literary journey. I felt that the revision was necessary and I loved the fact that I was becoming more familiar with the concept of rewriting. The model of memoir essays was most helpful in my revision because it guided me on how to make my essay more captivating.
During my revisions, I found that my energy wasn’t centered into one task in particular, but was kind of spread out in an attempt to try and fix whatever I thought needed fixing, which is probably why I struggled with finding specific parts of my writing that needed fixing instead of frivolous things that weren’t that bad and could’ve been left alone. I’m not the most proud of my revision because I absolutely could’ve done better, but I did like that I fixed up certain parts of my essay. One thing that did help was the feedback from my groupmate, Michael, who read my essay. The feedback he gave was really helpful and much appreciated because it he pinpointed one aspect of my writing in particular that I should elaborate on, which was how i was able to balance my use of AAVE and academic English.
When revising I focused moth on changing up the genre and editing my writing to fit the style of a letter. I also used my energy to focus on adding details making it more clear for the reader. I loved reading over more work and fixing mistakes I overlooked the first time.
My revison focused mainly on rewriting certian paragraphs. Based off peer feedback and feedback from Dr. Libertz, I realized that I was rushing and summarizing certian ideas. I separated each paragraph onto separate documents and spent time working on paragraphs individually before putting them together. The concept of MAYA from the readings also helped me with this. I wanted to present the ideas in a way that would seem new and better but keep the originality of the story I was trying to tell.
During my revision I focused on making sure the work had my “mark” on it. I didn’t want it to be too much about punctuation or format (even though I did work on those), but I did want to make sure that it sounded fluid and like a story almost. What really helped me in the revision process was reading my peers work. I was able to pick up some formatting ideas that I really liked about their pieces and try to implement them into my own. What I am most proud of about this revision is that it came so naturally to me. I didn’t put too much pressure on myself and with that I think I came up with more ideas.