Aubrey Oliver

RWS
September 9, 2015
SESSION ONE: Around 8:30pm in my dorm room. Television off, radio off. Silence. I'm leaning
against my bed, with my computer open. I have my headphones on as a microphone. I just have a blank
document open, and the instructions for the assignment. But that's it. My phone is in front of me as my
camera.
1-5:
Assignment document open. I'm reading the directions, and reading through the questions one by one
aloud. There's no typing, just speaking as I repeat the questions. I start out speaking, as I go into my
attitude as a writer, and distinguish between the different types of writing that I do such as academic
writing and writing in leisure. I bring up my summer writing, where I wrote fiction for leisure, and I
compare it to the academic writing I did in my senior year of high school with my English teacher.
With my thoughts finally out, I begin to type. Now I'm transferring my words to my computer, by
speaking aloud, then pausing as I put my words into the document. [RQ][GP] [T->W] [TWW]
5-10:
Now I'm speaking as I transfer my words to the computer. There's a period of
silence where I just stop speaking as I continue to type. I begin to speak again,
however, I refrain from typing. Now I'm organizing my thoughts aloud. I'm
wondering just when I began to consider myself a writer. I remember my high
school class.
There's another moment of silence where I ponder about the writing styles I've
learned. I begin to speak again and begin to type. This goes on for a while.
However, I stop writing and think to myself as I lose my train of thought. Now
I'm debating as to whether Shakespeare did a took on a certain type of poetry
style or not, and asking myself this aloud. Eventually, I use another word to
describe his style as to not confuse myself, and continue to type. When I'm
through answering that question, I comment on how loaded it was. There's now a
strain of silence. [GP][T->W] [S] [O] [S][BR (-)] [A (+)] [S]
10-15 :
The silence continues as I finish the question. I scratch my face as I wonder what
topic to approach next. Now I look at the directions again, and ponder on
whether I have to answer every single question. Deciding against it, I move to
the How I see myself as a writer, question. I speak aloud first, I see myself..
then I stop, and begin to type and speak. I begin to repeat the same phrase, I
defiantly see myself as someone.. and keep on deleting it, as I can find nothing
else to fit in. I can hear my sister recording her own portrait beside me.
I begin to speak of my issues as a writer. While I try to awe my readers, I often
loose the motive of the paper in the midst of impressive language.
I notice that when I speak aloud, I'm more casual, however when I begin to type,
my speaking becomes formal and my typing follows this pattern. There's a
silence in which I just type. After this silence, I begin speak aloud again. I tell

myself that I don't see myself as a bad writer, and I repeat this to myself. As I
repeat it, I put it on paper. There's another prolonged silence. I break the silence
as I begin to mumble about my heading.
I ask myself I have to answer these in order. There's silence, and then I begin to
speak. Is there a certain moment that shaped you as a writer, I read the next
question aloud. I begin to mumble to myself about different times that I have
seen myself as a writer, but I settle on one. It is in high school I recall at the
moment. I repeat it twice as I put it onto the paper. However, I continue to delete
the sentence because it doesn't flow. There's a moment of silence where I just
type.
[S] [A (+0][T->W] [EDEL] [O] [RoL] [T->W][S] [O][RoL] [O][EDEL] [WS]
15-20
I begin to speak aloud again as I try to rearrange the sentence to make it flow. I
find a good place in my sentence as I begin to speak and type about how my
writing developed in high schoolthough I realize just how confusing it is to
start in the middle of my writing journey. I say rewind aloud, and return to a
time in my elementary school, where one of my teachers crushed my idea of
writing by publicly humiliating me in a class. I had written a story for her class
about the yellow fever, and had continued repeating a certain phrase. The
teacher finding it repetitive asked the entire class, How much is she going to
use this same old phrase, in which they all laughed at me. Even though I
laughed with them, I was hurt.
I speak and type of how much my writing esteem had been killed as I went into
my freshman year of high school. However, I explain vocally and on my document
how I was asked why I hadn't applied to a preAP course during a week into my
freshman English class. I stop typing, and read all I have so far. Occasionally, I
change certain things and alter them. When i'm through, I go on to explaining
my preAP sophomore course and the challenges I faced in my AP Junior course,
and how it's hardships helped me become a better writer. There's a silence in
which I bite my tongue.
[RoL] [TWW][OB] [O] [RoL][S]
20-25:
I resume typing, and typing about my Junior course. I stop typing and read all I
have so far. When I'm finished, I type again in silence. My sister continues to
record in the background. I stop typing and begin to speak aloud about my
senior English class. It was a regular course so I explain that it wasn't as
challenging. I pop my knuckles as I remove my fingers from the keys. I return to
typing my words, though begin to type my thoughts in silence and chew my
tongue.
I speak again for a short moment, all in all, my high school teachers... and I

begin to type in silence.

After finishing, I say, Okay, and move to a different question. How long does it
take you to prepare to write? I jump straight into speaking aloud to myself,
about how I prepare essays in my head. As I speak, I also jot these things down
onto my computer document. I go into how I come up with a topic, and a thesis
and a point or a choice that I want to make. I continue to speak and jot these
things down aloud on my computer. I go into how I chose my topics (or proofs)
using historical, literature or personal experience. As I speak, I continue to type.
There's a short moment of silence as I catch up to myself.
I go into time management, by the time I begin to write my essay, if it isn't the
night before..., and how I begin with a concrete outline if I have time to plan
that. I go into the structure of my outline, how I place the topic sentence at the
beginning of one outline section, and place the tie back to my thesis at the end.
I continue with time management, I try to plan to write two to three days ahead.
I talk about my terrible procrastination.
[WS][RoL][FAM][O] [T->W] [WS] [RoL] [O] [TWW] [WS] [OB]
25-30:
I continue with my talk about procrastination, begin to type it onto the
document. There's a long moment of silence where I just type. When I'm done
typing, I begin to talk to myself. I crack my fingers and look up as ponder on
procrastination. There's more silence I type. I get distracted by something in the
room (probably boredom). The silence continues as I continue typing. I stop and
itch my face. However, my sister peeps and I ask her if she's okay. She says her
phone ran out of space. We begin to talk about how many body paragraphs we
should do, and the page length of the assignment.
[RoL] [TWW] [WS] [RoL] [A (-)] [WS] [FAM]
30-32:
I then begin to talk about writing rules. I go into the introduction and the hook
and the three body paragraphs. By now I have been recording and typing for a
very long time, so I'm slouched down. I speak and type. I talk about how
restricting sticking to my formula can be, how having to write and support three
paragraphs all the time, I usually prevent myself from writing. There's silence as
I continue typing.
I resume speaking aloud about the rules I use, such as the outline and the topics.
I then go on about my revision process. I read the question aloud, and then go
into reading and typing about how my revision is reading when I'm done, and
correcting any grammar or spelling errors. Sometimes I must reword and omit
certain parts, as well add certain parts and include citations at the end. I come to
the conclusion that revision for me is correcting what I did wrong when I

finished.
Then I cut the camera off.
SESSION END
[RoL] [T->W] [OB][O] [WS][RoL] [RQ] [TWW] [EDEL][RE]
Reflection questions
Does where and when you chose to write affect your writing process?
-Yes, it does. I find that when I'm most comfortable, such as in a library or in my room (not so
much my dorm room), and that when I'm comfortable, my writing tends to be better than usual.
I write better I find in the afternoon, when my day has come to an end and I have time to
process everything that occurred at school or at home. Also, It's not like in the morning where
I'm tired, or at night,when I'm sleepy.
Do you note any patterns or habits in your writing process?
-Yes. I begin first with creating a mental outline, where I choose my stance
of the paper I'm writing, as well as the topics I'll be using to support my thesis.
From there, I search for proofs
from literature, historical or personal
experiences.
Do any of these habits or patterns seem to affect (positively or negatively) the
strength or value of what you wrote?
-Yes, they effect me negatively. For example, I can't write an essay until I
find out what side I'm taking for my thesis. And I can't continue on without
finding out exactly what proofs I want to
use to support my evidence.