Revisiting my writing process

Lim, Walter, "A Reminder to Slay the Procrastination Beast" 10/08/14 via Flickr, CC0 Public Domain

In this post, I plan to reflect on my writing process, or what I believed it to be at the beginning of the course, at least. In my first few blog posts I explained my technique as a writer (in terms of completing writing projects), as well as my "ideal" calendar of how I would manage my time in conjunction with this class and the homework assigned.

Needless to say, while I did have a general idea of myself as a writer, nothing went ideally, or even remotely as planned in terms of my plan for being successful in this class.

I would still call myself a sequential writer, although I have been getting better at learning to take time after finishing a piece to look it over and perform some revisions, especially after our peer review experiences as a class. I did not plan on procrastinating as much as I did, however. Usually I can start the school year/semester off strong, and gradually drift into bad habits of turning in late assignments, but right from the beginning of this class it seemed the course load was just too much on top of my other obligations to actually gradually complete assignments like I should have done. There were times that I REALLY tried to start the deadline before the day it was due, but work, other assignments, and my personal life would completely take over until suddenly it was 4:15 pm on a Saturday, and with none of my deadline completed I would have to leave to work from 5-1 am, praying I would get time on my break to complete everything. There were other weeks where nothing interfered except for my own anxiety, stressing myself out more and more with the deadline in the back of my mind, to the point where I pushed it to the last possible minute.

Still, I am, for the most part, proud of everything I turned in for this course. There wasn't a single final draft that I turned in that I thought I would do poorly on or that I didn't give my best, even though my grades don't really reflect that. If I were to continue using the same time management techniques for the next few years that I used this semester, I can not envision doing well in school or my future career, but I'm hoping I can use this semester as more of a learning experience, where I taught myself how hard things can be when you put them off. As for my writing style, I feel I'll always be someone who plans, writes, and revises as I go, all in one draft, but I feel I learned how/when other writing styles can be useful through this course.