In order to produce a piece of well-rounded writing, it is a known fact that every author must be able to assemble, grease, and apply the many moving pieces of literacy throughout his work. These tasks, while being vital, do not at all necessitate that a particular technique or procedure be followed for their completion. Thankfully, writers are free to use their own methods to invent, revise, and discover. Speaking for myself, I certainly have my own writing method.
With the pen of creative opportunity in my hand, I transform. No longer am I Brandyn Kirby, high school senior from middle Tennessee; I am now a brave archaeologist, on a journey to find and display treasure among the words and thoughts that lie buried in the void of my mind. The path to discovery is never easy, but I am up to the challenge.
The first step of my journey is to plan out and contemplate the details of my hunt. While this process is often slow and tedious, it reaps invaluable rewards down the line. This routine gives me answers to important questions like: How long shall this trip take? Where am I going, and what do I want to find there? How deep do I want to dig here,
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and over there? Without answers to questions like these, I will get lost, confused, and frustrated once I begin excavating. I must know both what I already understand about my expedition, and learn that which I do not. After I have all the information I need to begin my journey, I must prepare myself mentally and physically. Anticipating lots of hard digging, I don my work boots, and pack up my best tools. I stretch, and take a moment to meditate on my goal. Before walking out the door to begin my excavation, I grad my favorite rugged fedora. It may seem odd, but I never dig without my hat; it serves well to block the sun from my eyes, and it comforts me in a way I cannot describe. I sit down at my chair, and begin my dig into the great and vast unknown. When I first start digging, I must take extreme care not to concern myself with every grain of dirt that I toss onto the page, as is my nature. If I spend all my energy inspecting every chunk of earth that I upset, I will never find anything. My immediate concern here does not fall to precision; Right now, my job is to transfer all the thoughts, points, and images from my head to the paper. As I do this, the once daunting clean white page begins to stain with my originality. Once I have removed all the topsoil from my work site, I must step away for a time.
All the dirt that I have moved makes my job site dusty, preventing me from seeing my project with clarity. Once the dust has settled, I am able to revise my work. I begin to clear out previously buried large rocks from off my page; they fly off in the form of spelling errors, fragments, and unnecessary commas. (To avoid discouragement, I always wear safety glasses; I don’t get blinded by my mistakes that way.) While I am removing rocks, I consider which areas map out areas of my work will most likely yield an artifact, and mark those for further excavation. I also contemplate which areas do not show much fruitful potential in order to stop their unnecessary development. I do this several times, again allowing time for the dust to
settle. Eventually, against the backdrop of my page, I will begin to see the outline of an ancient ruin. I began to grow excited, for I know that inside these ruins lay the priceless artifact I have been looking for! I take this opportunity to hone my search even further; I follow and mark the perimeter of these ruins, carefully digging around them, and this becomes my new search area. Unless something drastic changes, I will not explore anything outside this area. Why should I explore a part of my site that holds no treasure? Once I have dug out these ruins of the page, I know I am close to my prize. Before doing anything else however, I always bring in an outside expert to offer his or her thoughts on my discovery and work. I use the expert’s opinions to make my work even more precise and exact. After I have heard the expert’s critique, and modified in accordance to it, I, the writer, know I am nearly there. I continue to scour the paper, searching through the wordy corridors of ancient ideas. One day, I find what I am looking for. I move closer, slowly. Is that what I think it is! A bead of sweat falls from my brow as I realize that I am seeing the physical manifestation of my dreams. My heart stops. The blisters I have developed on my hand are no longer a concern to me. I have found what I wanted. I have ruled the page. Once again I bring in an outside source, to authenticate my piece. If it is found to be the real deal, then the celebration will begin! I read over the treasure that the page has yielded to me, and carefully clean it with pride. The journey has been worth it; all the twists and turns, surprises and disappointments, aches and pains have proved minor in the shining light of my page. My project, which began as a mere pile of dirt, has become golden. I am finished.
Another revision technique that was suggested was “sentence outlining” which involves summarizing each paragraph of a writing into one overarching sentence in order to improve the cohesion of the piece (Harris 450). Introducing these techniques can allow readers to utilize revision in their own writing and form their own stance on its effectiveness. With revising the conclusion of a piece, Harris’ advise is to look ahead rather than to rephrase what has already been stated (Harris 454). Revision is expected to extend beyond the piece.
The writing process is always taught as a set way of doing things when, in fact, it is a process that requires personal methods that work for each individual person. It is a necessary lesson to teach in school but there should not be so much emphasis on following the exact way that is taught. It is a contrived process that was probably created by a group of scholars who didn’t even follow these exact rules. If anything, they all did variations of the ideas and then met in the middle with what should be taught. I am in no way saying that the guidelines are wrong but they need to be exactly that, guidelines, instead of a rut that students get stuck in.
While there are people who love to read and write, there are others that do not. When a student is required to read a book for a class and that student does not enjoy reading, there are very few things they would rather do less. And when that book’s topic is about learning how to write that is the worst of it. When I was assigned to read Writing with Style by John R. Trimble, my immediate thought was that this book and assignment was going to be a struggle to get through. To my pleasant surprise, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Writing with Style provides the reader with a wide range of writing tips while being written in a fun, conversational style. This book provides easy to find writing tools that can be understood by people of varying
the reader a picture of a man who is not only digging, but doing it
Writing is a skill that seems to be easy, but there are several mistakes a writer can make in a paper. In Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein’s, They Say, I Say, The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, helpful tools are given to enhance people’s writings. There are variety of options that every writer should explore and later apply to improve their writing. Let’s explore these stylistic tools and how to use them to write a good paper.
I’ve broken earth in several attractive sites this last week. Some, it seemed, hid their treasures too deep for the scope of this excavation. Some presented me with granite barriers which I do not yet have the tools to penetrate. At other sites, the earth gave way easily and I made great progress, only to be flooded out. Finally, at the fifteenth hour, I have struck something shiny.
Anyone who is doing any type of writing piece has a process. They may not know it but it is there and it exists. It is one’s approach to their piece and how they go about accomplishing it. It has to do with how you write it, how many drafts you do, as well as your revision process if you even have one. My writing process however has room for improvement. A summation of my writing process consist of heavy planning, one draft, and little revisions. Anne Lamott, Shirley Rose, and Kathleen Yancey all drew attention to major points through their writing pieces that support and dispute my writing process. Through their pieces they have found a way to inspire, inform, and entertain me all at the same time while passing along great information that
Writing can be a very difficult process for those who do not know how to go about constructing
Recently, I have been writing quite a few essays and papers throughout my college experience. This entails, but not limited to, English, History, and Economics. My style of writing and methods have generally remained the same throughout the process. In this assignment, I will be discussing how I prepare to start a paper, what my thoughts are through the process, and my strengths and weaknesses of what my final drafts look like.
I am sitting in my bed, thinking about my process of writing as I am trying to go through it. It seems the more I think about it, the less I understand it. When I am writing, I don’t think. Which I know, sounds bad. But, I spend every single moment of every single day over thinking, over analyzing, and over assuming every aspect of my life. When I’m writing, I’m free from that for just a little bit. Until of course, my hands stop typing or the pencil (no pens- never pens) stops moving, then I’m right back on the carousel that is my brain. Heidi Estrem says, “...writers use writing to generate knowledge that they didn’t have before.” (Writing is a Knowledge-Making Activity 18). I believe my ability to write without an exact destination
The artifact record keeping strategies and practices of archaeologists and excavators can be compared to modern day bookkeeping as every artifact has to be journalized and posted to some sort of a ledger as every transaction in accounting has to be analyzed, then journalized and posted to a ledger.
Regardless of my lack of knowledge, I started to work on the geology collection by examining one small segment of the entire collection. The sample section of the collection contains several boxes of geological textbooks, maps, magazines, and several geological reports from the Department of Water and Power. One archaeological method I have learned from one of my previous archaeology classes is when archaeologists conduct their work in small areas or test pits in the archaeological site. I am applying this archaeological method to my geology collection sample because I can organize the geology collection into different categories and stacking the materials up into different piles. I stacked the geology textbooks and magazines into one pile, the DWP reports in another and continued organizing different geological materials in my small piles based on their similar physical attributes and written content. As I went through the small section of the geology collection, I realized that this collection belonged to an engineering geologist who worked for the DWP. I came up with that conclusion based on several geology textbooks and DWP memorandums I discovered while I was going through the sample
Note writing facilitates the learning process between students and instructors in the online environment. According to Qui, Hewitt, and Brett (2012), class size is one aspect that effects note writing and note reading in the online course environment. Unlike traditional face-to-face classes, online classes are conducted through text and influences the students note writing behavior (Qui et al., 2012). The authors contend that classes too large, create situations in which students are overloaded by having to read more notes and in turn, this affects not only the writing process but the quantity and the quality of writing styles. Students wrote more notes as the classes increased and consequently, the quality of the notes reduced. On the other hand, classes that are too small
He knew that once “the ground was disturbed, it could never be returned to its original state” (112). In consideration of this fact, he would spend a great deal of time surveying the land. With today’s technology, archaeologists can use ground penetrating radar and LIDAR to find archaeological sites without digging into unknown land. Ground penetrating radar sends an electromagnetic signal into the ground and uses the reflections to determine how far they need to dig. It even has the ability to recognize small objects that are profoundly deep and can be used to plot data and map out the land. Lidar stands for “light radar” and is similar to ground penetrating radar except it uses a laser to detect how much depth there is. Additionally, lidar can pass through tree tops, which is advantageous to archaeologists for mapping the land. A modern advancement in the archaeological technology used today, which would have been helpful to Metz, is magnetometry and the use of magnetometers. Magnetometers can detect brick, iron, or even burned soil within the earth by using a sensor that reads the strength of a magnetic field. Along with advanced archaeological technology, scientific methods have also changed and improved since the 19th
But, underwater archaeologists also looked at other kinds of sites, like flooded land sites, or fishing areas. The archeological objective of digging materials in a powerful fashion where the natural location of each artifact can be recorded and looked at later. Many “tools of the trade” used on earth;y archaeological quarry are used for underwater unearthing as well. Advanced technologies are condemning to behavior science in great depths of the ocean. In recent years, scuba diving archaeologists have made fantastic findings by searching shipwrecks in deep water. Searching in shallow water can also show clues about different types of boats that may not have normally moved into deep waters. During this time, scuba-diving archaeologists have made terrific discoveries by excavating shipwrecks in deep