Righting my writing practice.

Humbled and yet, keen.

I am so thankful for the detailed notes and personal pointers from my instructor in our last course, starting my out on an eye-opening journey of writing. I have déjà vu from university days when an instructor suggests the writing center, more revising/editing, and time…I need more time.

I appreciate discovering again how I learn and especially with writing – much more invested in seeing myself work through this process. Academic writing is straightforward. It is direct and clear. I need to work on this area. I am finding difficulty in synthesizing my thoughts to have efficiency in my writing, yet be effective. While I am trying to be efficient, such as in the briefing note where the word count was important, I cut out or did not elaborate on the important pieces. I thought I did at the time but realize that I was not thoughtful what I was saying, making connections for my reader and developing a line of reasoning in what I wrote. I made some assumptions in my writing, which hindered my clarity and ability.

I understand that writing takes time and there is a process that is different for everyone. Being aware of my writing process and honoring the time I need to tackle my tasks is what I have to work into my schedule–it is a goal. Time, a constant battle and unforgiving, makes me nervous as it is the one thing that will help me overall. I plan to work with the writing center more and to seek some help, which means…you guessed it, I have to be better planned to build in revision and editing time.

Besides the writing center for resources, I will refer to OWL Purdue. It is a wealth of information, and I have always had it in my bookmarks–writing and APA. I am a huge fan of Grammarly. It is useful and having to examine the suggested edits, forces me to reread closely. I also plan to take advantage of mentor texts. I use this tool with my students and find it very powerful and effective. Using academic texts that I read, styles and content, I will examine and note the efficiency in writing, the use of evidence—paraphrasing and evidence. Using a mentor text will allow me to emulate structure and model of good academic writing. I have collected introductions and conclusions, paragraphs, samples of sentence structure with sources used to help guide me to be a better writer. I also use academic articles to look at referencing and paying attention to the detail.

I continue to search the web and peruse my peers’ blogs for other suggestions.

So….