Works in Progress (WIP #1)

For my first works-in-progress blog post, I have an extensively large amount of things to say about the progress of my “This I Believe,” as enunciated by our in-class discussion today in groups.

One strength from my piece that I was able to glean from the opinions of others was my ability to create incredibly powerful, descriptive sentences. This was tied in heavily to my ethos and my pathos. I went back and forth a lot on whether to take on this assignment with a lighter, more mundane topic and redefine that experience, or write about something very personal or emotional to enhance my pathos and to move/persuade the audience. I’m glad that I chose to go with the later just because I feel I was able to have more leverage in terms of descriptive details which enhanced my message at the end very well. Granted, the whole essay isn’t littered with similes and metaphors and imagery, but the segments that I particularly wanted emphasized are, just to better get my point across, and I’m happy that from feedback from peer-review, I was able to get my writing to show that well both when written, and ESPECIALLY when performed (if performed correctly).

A major factor that I have to work on for the final draft and podcast is definitely shortened sentence structure for performance purposes, and added clarity to some portions of the piece. The person who read mine originally said that descriptors are incredibly strong, but sometimes extra clarification or background is needed for certain statements or there are places where the transitions between paragraphs (and also transitions between important ideas…how one inevitably led directly to another) is fairly weak and needs to be worked on a bit. Some paragraphs can be condensed down, and others can be elaborated more on with extra examples of what I’m talking about. There’s nothing drastically wrong, but a good series of editing for clarification and some for adding necessary points to strengthen my theme would definitely be helpful and hopefully reach more people in the audience.

On that note, the group effort was VERY productive in my opinion, and it opened my eyes to my peers’ interpretation of my work, their particular performance of my piece, and the way in which the other members of my group wrote their own pieces. It was nice to be able to compare and contrast the different genres, tones, and writing styles to be able to gauge which combination of rhetorical strategies could best describe the setting we are trying to create for our individual essays and podcasts. Other people may disagree, but I believe that the peer-reviewing that we did in class today was extremely effective and encouraging for the purpose of future editing before the final draft of the essay is due (and the accompanying podcast, of course) and hearing someone critique my work was exactly what I needed.

I’ve noticed that I personally have a tendency of thinking my work sounds/comes off as one way, and then when someone else reads it, they sometimes have a completely different interpretation than I do. Perhaps I’m slightly biased because it is my own work after all, but it’s refreshing and mind-altering to see someone else’s review and opinion of what you’ve written, granted the other person took time and effort into crafting their response for you (the kids in my high school English classes never took peer-review seriously, so to have a class period dedicated to focusing on peer-editing was soooo successful and opened my eyes to what real peer-reviewing can do for others and for yourself)

I hope we do more of these kinds of writing exercises in the near future!