Abigail Bromley

Ariel McGuirk

ENGL 224-004

March 28, 2019

My Writing Process

In describing my writing process, I would say that I tend to get my work done a lot later
in the day and at night, but it mostly depends on what environment I’m in. I need complete
silence and no distractions so I’ll often book a study room or go to the Zimmerman study wing
because I know that they’ll be areas of the most productivity. If I’m at home, however, then I’ll
just go to my room and shut the door as its the most private. Although this can be a little
problematic sometimes as I don’t have a desk so I do my work in bed which can either be
conductive or I’ll get comfortable to the point where I forget about my assignment completely.
I’ve found that when I do get into a mood for writing, I usually can keep it if I make an
outline because it lets me see clearly all the points I want to include in the assignment. I tend to
stick to the webbing method as it has been the same one I’ve used since elementary school and
I’m most familiar with it, but I have made bulleted lists as well that’s proven useful when I’m
pressed for time. What I focus on most is the topic or argument then I’ll have ideas relevant or
supporting branching out from that and then smaller details will in turn branch from those. This
is helpful especially when I become lost in my writing as I can go back and visually see where I
originally wanted to go and how I can either make changes or revert back accordingly.
In describing my planning process, I should also mention that I don’t really plan out
characters. I tend to just think of a name and if I find one that sticks then I use it in my story,
however, I have had a little difficulty with this because the character will ultimately be flat as it
is severely lacking compared to the plot, setting, or theme. Referencing writing journal 5, those
characters were made up in the spot and while I think I delivered the story I wanted to tell, the
characters were largely ambiguous and could be replaced with anyone else as I hadn’t placed any
features or solid personalities to them. I think this ultimately comes from my lack of experience
with actual creative writing as I had always been “trained” in prose as it was for assignments and
anything else was either poetry or stories ranging from ancient times to those of modernist or
structuralist theories that I read and analyzed textually. To me, reading and writing are vastly
different when you are meant to be creating a world in which the people in it are made as you see
fit as opposed to just reading about a world someone else has already created. In the nonfiction
assignment, for example, I found it both easy and extremely tedious to describe the memories
used because while they were mine, the translation into a story was a process I hadn’t really
taken the time to consider. In the opening paragraph, the very first sentence where I wrote “My
earliest recollection of something being inherently ‘wrong’ was around the time I was three” was
probably changed about five or six times because it kept sounding wrong to me and even still as I
quote it, it grates on my ears. Also, having to write dialogue was somewhat foreign as I was
unsure of how you should format it and how conversational it was supposed to sound.