Crystal Rodriguez

80475321
MWF 11:30-12:20

Portrait of a Writer
Hello, my name is Crystal Rodriguez, I am majoring in Forensic Science, and
this is my story of how I progressed as a writer throughout the years. From 6
th
grade
in middle school until junior year in high school, I had to take the English Language
Arts TAKS test, however, throughout these years, I was forced to write the way my
teachers believed was the correct way in order to pass this state test. For example,
I remember my freshman year I wrote a personal composition for the TAKS test in
Spanglish and I nearly failed the composition portion because I didnt have steady
language and diction. So, because of this, my teachers told me to always write in
English, never speak in first person, always use quotes, go in-depth when analyzing,
and that your writing needs to have a moral. By moral I mean that, my teachers
would recommend but in reality force us to write stories that give a life lesson and
require us to make an in-depth or global analogy or connection. But all this rule
nonsense came to an end when I joined both yearbook and tennis in high school, and
found my inner passionsso passionate that they both tend to go hand in hand.
Why are they my passionate hobbies you might ask? Because they have both
influenced me to stay true to myself and always strive to be what you want to be,
and put the necessary effort and practice to get there.
Over the past four years, the way I see myself as a writer changed
dramatically all because of my decision in joining yearbook, all so that I may have
my high school graduation requirement. I wasnt a huge fan of writing, but ironically
enough it has now become one of my favorite things to do since I have learned that
it is okay to express yourself without dealing with rule hassles. Because my teachers
used to etched so many rules in my writing, I became blind to my true self. I lost my
voice, and most importantly, I lost my courage to write. I thought of myself as a
robot writer, but it wasnt until joining yearbook, and writing that first draft of my
feature story. This particular experience changed me, for it was the first time a
reader (my yearbook advisor) took the time to speak to me one on one regarding
my draft and she revised it with me, going through new ideas, helping me discover
new writing techniquesfor example use metaphors or paint pictures/scenes for
the reader, dont be afraid to express your opinion, or use two or more different
languages if you want and need to in order to cause a bigger impact to your
readerand most importantly, finding my voice again and taking risks.
Since I broke free from the shackles of rules, and kept writing with my
voice, I started getting good feedback/suggestions/comments and have eventually
grown the confidence to see myself as a good writer. I prefer, however, seeing
myself as a liberal writer rather than a good writer. Liberal writer, in my terms,
means that I am carefree when writingat first I write all my thoughts, everything I
want to say, which includes the risks such as speaking in first person, and then after
I finish what I needed to say, thats when I review and have someone review it with
me. This writing procedure seems to be basic and easy, however my true detailed
process is so much more complex, like playing tennis for the first time. And because
of this complexity that exists when Im writing, I compare my process to my other
passion that Ive had for quite some timetennis.
I have been playing tennis for about 5 years now, and it seems like I have
gotten into a sort of rhythm when I write that resembles my methods when I play
tennis. To be more specific, before I play tennis, I spend about a good 20 minutes to
half and hour mentally preparing myself for my match. My mind plays scenarios like
a projector, slowly depicting what trick plays I should do, how I can take the lead
and stay in the lead, what are my strongest strokes as well as my weakest strokes
(in order to avoid them), and lastly, what I want to accomplish at the end of my
match, regardless of the outcome. This seems to be exactly how I brainstorm for an
upcoming essay. I tend to think about what point Im trying to get across, what
material should I use in order to get this point across, how and what can I do to
make my reader feel what I feel and understand what Im trying to say, as well as
hear my voice as they read along. Another thing I do when I brainstorm in writing
and tennis, I gather my sources. For example, in writing, I look over professional
authors and I try to mimic part of their prose that may be helpful to me, for example
their natural flow of speech without a set structure; meanwhile in tennis, I study my
opponent and take note of their strengths and weaknesses.
It is now game time. I put all my thoughts together and begin to execute my
plan. However, I must say, that when I play tennis, my plan may or may not go the
way I expect it to, which is what happens when I write too. In other words, when I
strategize, it is not set in stone, because when something changes I have to change
along with it and adjust. For example, if I get new information while writing, I will
use it depending if its beneficial to my paper; in tennis, if my opponent does
something different that I didnt know about, I adjust myself, or if I notice that my
strategy isnt working I try different ones to get back on a good pace. Normally, I
dont like adjusting my game, however if its necessary then I have to change my
pace along with my opponent. For example, if my opponent may be hitting lightning
fast shots over and over again, gaining points from me, thats when I take the
decision of whether hitting maniacally like her (adjusting to her speed) or slow it
down, like taking about four 5-second deep breaths before I serve, or hitting
measured, calm, and unhurried strokes, like drizzling rain after the big storm.
Game, Set, Match! I have finished my first draft.
After finishing my first draft, and obviously before submitting it, I look it over
to see what I can substitute, or to even put freshly new ideas that may work better.
In tennis, if I lose a match, I look back on what I did wrong, what I need to work on,
and also what new plays I could input in my playing style. While writing, if I notice
that theres something thats just not working for me, I can either rewrite it, add
detail in order to make it flow into the next sentence, or simply throw it out. This
part of revision on my behalf is all because I want to fix anything that seems to
now be working in my favor. In essence, throughout revision, this is where the new
ideas replace your old methods, which is why I firmly believe that theres always
room for improvement, therefore the revision part is my most important in writing
and playing tennis.
Many people will compare their writing to their other passionate hobby,
which is why it is only natural for me to relate to tennis when it comes to my
writing. Granted that these two are complete separate activities, but after putting
some thought behind it, they seem to perfectly correlate with one another. I have
faced both good and bad experiences in writingsuch as the one where I wasnt
allowed to write in Spanglish, or for example the one where I was told by my high
school teachers and principal that I was an eloquent writer after they had read my
editorial column in The Pioneer, Austin High Schools monthly newspaperas well
as I have in tennis, like when I was told by my uncle that I would never be good in
tennis because of my 52 height, or when I won and earned my way up to be the #1
ranked girl in my team and became the first female overall captain. These
experiences have definitely molded my perspective of how I see myself as a writer,
my style of writing, and how my writing has changed over time.
Now, this is only how I think I write or how I see myself as a writerbut how
do I truly write and how is my composition process really like? After listening to my
audio notesand keeping in mind Tomlinson, Perl, and BerkenkotterI realized
more about myself. As I analyzed my recording, I began to notice my constant
habits while I write, some strengths and weaknesses I have while I compose, and
how constantly my mind keeps working in order to produce the next words or
sentences.
The first note I took about my recordings is that I had a total of three
sessions. In order to write my portrait of a writer, I divided my processes in three
phases. For example, in one day I only did my prewriting/planning. The next day I
began to write my composition until I finished, and the next phase was after my
scheduled peer review and I began revising my first draft and fixed whatever
needed to be fixed and try to clear up on my peers comments they had on my paper.
During my prewriting phase, I noticed a couple of things. One of the major
things I noticed was that I only took about 20 minutes to plan what I wanted my
paper to include or look like. Im actually a bit surprised because I thought this
section was going to take me the longest since its where all the ideas sort of come at
you out of nowhere, and I want to include every one of them, but have to limit
myself and narrow it down to only a couple. I actually thought planning, for me, was
the hardest part to do since its basically your papers structure.
Another major thing I noticed was my strategy. My prewriting strategy
mostly involved dividing my ideas in paragraph topics, and then the details for these
topics were basically the subtopics. To elaborate on this, I wrote my main topics in
columns, then the information and details I wanted to include in each topic were
written under the columns. Now that I think about it, these subtopics tend to be
the individual sentences within one topic paragraph. Also, during this phase, its
where all my thinking and reminiscing kicked in. I wrote most of these ideas down,
especially the ones I marked as important to mention. And lastly, what I noticed is
that I dont necessarily repeat this exact phase later on through my composition, but
I do tend to do some form of planning while I write, which Ill explain later.
In the composing phase, I noticed a wide spectrum of habits, methods, and
procedures I do while writing. First things first, I spent about a good hour and a half
composing my portrait of a writer, which to me seems eternal. Some patterns I
noticed is that I started with the simple and easiest topic to write first. What I mean
by this is that I wrote first about my current writing topic, and then sort of drifted
backwards, potentially losing my reader as far as time order goes. So, in other
words, I cared more about getting my topics written, rather than thinking through of
how to organize my events in chronological order. I also noticed that I tend to
develop my paragraphs in a linear fashion. Reason I say this is because I start on
my introductory paragraph, then I dont move on from this paragraph until I feel
satisfied enough to move forward. Then after completing my introduction, I move
onto the standard paragraph topicwriting about the first topic I mention in my
thesis statement. For example, in my thesis I mentioned tennis and writing being
similar first, then the first paragraph following my introduction was about tennis
being similar to writing.
A main rule that seemed to restrain my composing process was fluidity. Do
my sentences flow into the next sentences? Does my concluding sentence in the last
paragraph flow properly to my introductory sentence in my next paragraph? This
rule seemed to be where I spend most of my time trying to figure out, which more
often than not led me to having the infamous writers block. Writers block tended to
happen to me when I would try to figure out how to finish off a sentence. Based off
my recordings, I would nearly break my head trying to figure out what to say next.
However, what really helped me dig myself out the writers block hole was the fact
that I kept repeating the beginning of the sentence over and over again until a word
came up and an idea just clicked.
Reading my sentences over and over again was one good habit I noticed after
analyzing my recordings. During every sentence I was formulating, I would
constantly read back the previous words I had written, I would repeat them over
and over again until I began typing again, and then planned and edited while writing
the next words I wanted to say. After finishing the sentence, I would read that whole
sentence again, and then read the whole paragraph I had written so far. If I liked it, I
moved on, if not, I would read each sentence and edit it a little bit more.
One bad habit I had though was the fact that the television, my cellphone, and
Facebook easily distracted me. I wasnt constantly texting or watching TV or
checking my Facebook, but I did do it periodically, for example whenever I felt tired.
The longest I lasted in my distractions was about five minutes, and then I forced
myself to focus back on my paper. I will admit though, that sometimes after getting a
text, or watching TV, or seeing something on Facebook, I would lose my train of
thought and I would have to read whatever I wrote last in order to get back on track.
About 10 days later, I began my revision process. I left my paper alone after
the first draft submission, then waited until my peer review conference to begin
revising my draft. I feel like the peer review session did me well since I saw them
face-to-face, got to hear what they meant in their comments in order to clarify my
confusion, and both my peers and teachers gave me good feedback on how to
improve my paper. However, I feel like I didnt improve my paper a whole lot like I
wouldve wanted to since I only got a few comments back. Nonetheless, I did spend
about an hour and a half again in my revising phase.
During this phase, I did not focus on surface errors, for I mainly focused on
reorganizing my paragraphs chronologically and also clarifying only the comments
my peers gave me. For example, I would only clarify in the sections my peers told
me to, which mainly included a more in-depth explanation of what I meant. Because
I only focused on the comments, and the sentences where these comments were, I
think I did not thoroughly revise my first draft.
I would like to mention, however, that I do in fact edit, and plan, while I
compose. After I noticed this, I compared my writing process structure as a
recursive writer. A recursive writer goes from planning to composing to editing to
planning again, then composing, then back to planning, then editing, and so on and
so forth. This is where I relate to Perls article/study about the back and forth
method.
Perl had mentioned that unskilled writers tend to write in a recursive
structure, constantly editing and planning while composing. However, I can also
compare myself to Berkenkotters study on Donald Murray. What I mean by this is
that, yes, I do constantly edit and plan while writing, however, unlike unskilled
writersI do not focus on fixing surface errors. In conclusion, the most significant
things I observed and learned from my recording notes is that I write in a recursive
mode, and that I write using the back and forth method. Because of this observation,
I consider myself more along the lines of Berkenkotters article/study of a skilled
writer.