Jobs Need Jargon: My Writing Process
When I first received the assignment for my second college essay I was thrown
back completely. I thought to my self, “what the hell is a rhetorical analysis! Why was I
never taught this in school?” The term rhetorical itself was quite intimidating, as well as
the idea of analyzing something rhetorical. I think that I would have been less intimidated
going into the assignment if I had been exposed to something similar prior to taking my
first college level English class.
We were assigned four pieces to pick form and analyze for the essay: an excerpt
of Malcolm X’s biography, Learning the Language by Perri Klass, The Joy of Reading
and Writing: Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie, and Disliking Books at an Early Age
by Gerald Graff. At first I chose the excerpt of Malcolm X’s biography because I found it
to be the most interesting. I thought that X’s views and ideas were intriguing and that the
narrative aspect of the piece pulled the reader in very well. Being interested in a text that
I’m reading is a very important aspect of the assignment to me. If I’m interested and
invested in what I’m doing I tend to wrap-up sooner and have a more polished finished
essay. I re-read X’s excerpt about two or three times, continuing to annotate more and
more until the margins on the pages seemed to be full. It was not until I started to
formulate my first outline that I realized the topic was not what I truly wanted to write
about.
Thinking back to when I started my outline I came to the realization that I may
have liked reading about X’s ideas, but writing about them became a new task I couldn’t
seem to tackle. Luckily, one day in our class period we were assigned to write a summary
about one of the stories assigned to us. I was put into a group to write a summary for the
essay Learning the Language. My group had selected my summary to read aloud to the
class, which the class selected as the most well written summary. This inspired me to
change my essay topic from Malcolm X’s piece to Learning the Language. Though I had
only written a summary I felt that I would be more comfortable writing about the topic.
After starting to outline for my new topic ideas started to come more naturally, which
progressed into the beginning stages of my thesis statement that I was struggling with. I
consulted with LTC Ticen after choosing my new topic and brought up my trouble with
theses, and she directed me to write out of order and knock out my body paragraphs
before even dealing with my thesis. This was shocking news to me because it sounded so
radical, but it made sense because I was able to throw all of my information and ideas
down on paper first. The ability to do this allowed me to generate a thesis that was clear,
concise, and relevant to all the evidence I used to defend my statement.
Drafting my first body paragraphs had its ups and downs. I had read a piece of
literature at the beginning of my class by Anne Lamott titled Shitty First Drafts that I
found comfort and motivation in. Lamott states, “The first draft is the child’s draft, where
you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going
to see it and that you can shape it later.” (Lamott 302) This quote was essentially how I
got through the initial rough draft of the essay. I would write my first draft, which would
consist of unorganized thought, bad grammar, and irrelevant evidence from the text and
revise it until I thought it was acceptable. I feel as if I’m a perfectionist with my writing,
and that it inhibits me from getting all of my thoughts down. Lamott alleviated this with
her ideas of writing and then revising.
After finishing my body paragraphs I came to my introduction and conclusion.
During my discussion about writing out of order with LTC Ticen, we also talked about
writing a conclusion, and then moving parts of it to the introduction. The logic being that
a conclusion is a concise reflection of what is in the body paragraphs, which is a good
way to introduce the topic in your essay. I took most of my conclusion and combined it
with my thesis statement and formulated my introduction. Afterwards I went back and
generated a new conclusion that tied all of my points together and reflected my thesis
statement. At the end of each essay I re-read the final draft and create a new outline of the
points reflected each paragraph. If done successfully my new outline should match my
original outline, and my final draft will be organized and complete.