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Image by Nathan Dumlao

Revising

Once I have input from others, I am able to edit and finalize my rough draft into a final draft for submission. When building, I can change out some of the Legos, and add new ones to make it a stronger and more impactful structure. Of course, I still make sure it stays true to my vision, but I always want to ensure my final product is effective and completes my goal. When revising, I really like to expand the rhetorical appeals in my writing. Just like how I can use different architecture in the Legos to describe the theme or environment of the building, in writing I can utilize rhetorical appeals to help set the scene and make my writing stand out. By adding lots of strong language, and sense descriptions, I can better connect with my audience and hopefully have a bigger impact to them while they are reading my writing. Editing is an essential part of the writing process to make sure that my writing is the best that it can be and that I am proud of what I accomplished. 

My first writing artifact is a little unconventional for the revision stage of the writing process, but was still crucial to my mindset when drafting and revising my writing. The photo to the right is a screenshot of some of my reading notes and connections from Anne Lamott’s “Shitty First Drafts”, an essay focused on suggestions for drafting and revising in the writing process. I made numerous connections with this text from phrases I have heard from my friends and family back home and it was my favorite thing I read during class this quarter. This essay really changed how I viewed the writing process and helped me learn to develop a recursive writing process, not just with drafting but even in the revision process. In the past, I had often seen the writing process as a rough draft and then a final draft but this essay helped me to realize that the writing process is much more complicated than that. The writing process is full of multiple rough drafts and final drafts. It is filled with broken sentences, incomplete paragraphs, and jumps between topics. This reading helped me to realize that I can have numerous revision drafts in between my rough and final drafts. I learned that revisions don’t have to be final, more often than not they are fluid and constantly changing. I don’t just think of this essay just when I am working on my draft, but all throughout the editing and revision processes too. Knowing that my writing can be ever-changing, has made me a stronger and more confident writer. Reading this essay became central to all of my writing in this class in the writing process as a whole, and I hope to continue to use Lamott’s suggestions in my future writing as well. 

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Sequence 1

Sequence 2

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At first, when I was drafting my sequence 2 essay I didn’t really know how I wanted to start the essay. I knew I needed a strong hook to get the audience’s attention but I wasn’t sure how I wanted to do it. During all of my drafts I just had the sentences shown in the first photo. I felt that they were necessary to the essay as they provided good background information and had my thesis about Eric creating change, but they weren’t attention-grabbing, at least not in the way I was looking for. As I continued working on my draft I realized that I needed much more description in the essay, and that I haven’t set the scene for the audience at all. I knew right away that I could use the introduction of the essay to provide the audience with important first-hand experience from the interview while also giving them an insight into Eric’s personality before I got into the thesis of the essay. With this new goal in mind, I set to write about the scene I encountered before the interview, describing the environment with lots of sense observations to real bring the essay to life. The final introduction paragraph can be seen in the second photo to the left. In the end, I am really proud of my introduction essay and I think it brings lots of ethos to the essay. 

In sequence 3 I focused heavily on logos, ethos and kairos in my essay. I knew that in order to persuade my audience about my claim with my topic, I needed to provide strong, credible and logical evidence about the topic while also showcasing the information in a clear and concise way. When I first started writing my paragraphs disputing the counterargument to my topic, I realized that I could really disprove the opposition if I did more research on California taxes and show the audience the true breakdown for the numbers. This resulted in a ton more research work, added 4 more sources to my work cited, and tested my mathematical skills, but in the end, I think it added so much more ethos and logos to my side of the argument. The red underlined portion of the photo to the right shows the writing I added to my rough draft counterargument paragraph. Out of my whole essay, this paragraph is one of the things I am the most proudest of because I spent a lot of time working on it and I think it turned out very strong.

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Sequence 3

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