Process Writing

The idea of thinking about how I write and why I write it is difficult. Sometimes I don’t know how to put my thoughts into words that are understandable. At other times the words just flow through my hand onto the screen.

                The majority of my writing is just a flow of thoughts. Literally. When beginning a piece, I think about what I would like to see on the page, and I write. My thoughts are formed into sentences and I even include the pauses and then later take them out. I write what I think and then I think about what I wrote. The revision process is odd, at least I think so. Once done writing my flow of thoughts, I go back and take out what I don’t like, reword some things here and there, maybe change a word or two. Sometimes if I don’t entirely like a sentence but like the thought behind it, I will copy it and then delete it, write a new one, paste the original, and then combine the two. It’s kind of an ongoing process. I don’t say I’m going to revise a piece after I am done writing a draft. It’s more like revising the draft while revising it.

                Frustration comes to me at the oddest times. Mainly when I am beginning and ending a piece is when I am frustrated the most. I want the beginning to be good, and so writing thoughts and flow has to start with a good first sentence, if not, then I already won’t like my own piece. As for the ending, I feel like I need to end it on either a leftover thought or something that’ll somehow be reflective of the piece. Until I find the right balance between the two, I tend to just fill the end with sentences and words that will hopefully give me a sense of completion.

                The reader’s comments were helpful. Sometimes I forget that I go off on tangents or that my thought aren’t completely coherent, and the comments made while in workshop and while on the blogs helped me see the points in each piece of work that needed to be clearer or something. I tend to just go off on a thought, forget to reread it, and then continue on. Other times I look over the draft and feel like inserting a new thought or phrase somewhere, and when the readers would comment on it, it would help me see whether it was a good decision or not. I also thought a lot about what the readers thought of my pieces. I want to make sure my perspectives are being clear, and with a reader, I see if they were or weren’t. Other times I would be proud about something that I had written and the readers would either be confused about it or didn’t like it at all, and I think in those kinds of moments were when I had to decide if I wanted my work to be reflective of the comments given to me or not. Most of the time they were, and that different forms of feedback I would be given would be incorporated into my pieces. At other times, I would be a little too prideful and keep what I originally wrote, but would either fix and edit to make it clearer or try to get it to what the readers wanted.

                I think throughout this quarter I reflected a lot of what food meant to me. Not only because the class was about food and travel, but it never made me realize how food plays an important role in my life. In the beginning, we wrote about memory and I chose to write about my family. In this past assignment I wrote about a perfect meal that defined my family, and many times in between I mentioned them. Homesickness is always brought up in conversation, and every time someone asks me if I am homesick, I say no. But, I either don’t want to admit the fact that I’m homesick, or I don’t realize it until I write, but I am. It is odd writing about them and not realizing that I miss them. And how food is intertwined with them and the feelings and memories I have. I crave Mexican food when I think of my mother, but am in a really good mood when I think about my brothers. The food I eat and see usually has a connection to my family somehow. Maybe I am over exaggerating a bit, but now I see that I do miss them. It sounds so cliché but missing my family wasn’t a thing last year. As a freshman, it was the hype of college and getting involved that distracted me from missing them. This year, it’s different. I think through this class I was able to channel my homesickness through writing and food. I think I’ll continue doing this writing about family unconsciously, since it seems to have helped this quarter.