Process Memo Rebecca Christie

Rebecca Christie

Wrt 150

Mrs.Rinke

10/12/12

Process memo

Reflecting on a piece of my own writing is a brand new experience. Usually, once a piece of work is turned in, it is erased from my brain in a “whew, it’s over” moment. For this three part assignment, I knew instantly that the paper’s theme would be my struggle. My challenge would be to convey this to my audience without pity all the while demonstrating that literacy is a lifelong journey. I found the entire process to be both challenging and fulfilling. Challenging because I still have anxiety about my writing capabilities especially now that I am in college and fulfilling because my teacher actually acknowledged my idea as worthwhile both through discussion and my final grade on the assignment. Two things came out of my reflection on this three part assignment. One is that even though I have learned to write for me and my pleasure, it still matters to me what others think of my writing, and two, I will continue to feel angst and pressure and insecurities along my literary journey forever. 

The timeline was an easy place to start. Chronologically, I could look back on my elementary school years as filled with angst and frustration. I could have easily included the endless hours reading out loud to my parents, the tutors, the after school sessions only to have made my audience bored. Those details are still fresh and indelible in my brain. It amazed me how easily all those emotions came flooding back. Old wounds are not easily healed. On the other hand, I didn’t want to omit these times from the narrative entirely. So, I chose to briefly state that I was diagnosed with a speech and language delay and Attention Deficit Disorder. I did not want to go into technical jargon that only a psychology major would appreciate. The theme of my struggle would be woven throughout the paper, with another theme of achievement and success and the self-confidence that I gained from these struggles as I took many small steps toward literacy. The timeline became how I chose to arrange my paper and kept me from writing too much on any one year or any specific incident.

Focusing on the overall feeling of the paper helped me with the writing process. Since I knew from the beginning that I wanted my paper’s theme to be struggle and success, I had to show both parts of the equation. There were two parts to my struggle – the technical part and the emotional part. The technical part was my speech and language issue and my attention deficit disorder. The emotional part was being made fun of and a lack of self confidence. Likewise, there were two parts to my success - the literary part and the emotional part.  The literary part was the speaking, reading and writing accomplishments. The emotional parts were the gains in self esteem and achievements in school. Actually, physically making a list of these and having it near me while creating my rough draft helped me organize my thoughts and keep on task. I found that I could easily ramble on in my paper about my life and experiences. While editing, I decided it was best to state my thoughts and actions and move on. This is where my peer review came in handy. My two peers both stated in their reviews that my story was compelling and interesting and that relieved me. That was most important to me. However, there is always one problem with peer review.  Allowing a peer to review your work opens it up – revealing parts of me to strangers and being judged.  Reflecting on this is when I realized my chronic insecurities.  

 Up until this point, I had not transitioned from the narrative to the slideshow. When I did, I discovered a problem. The aim of my paper was to convey to the reader my struggle, but visually I could never show that. There are no pictures of me crying while trying to read or me with my first grade tutor. So, airing my dirty little secrets on paper was one thing, but putting pictures and music behind it was another.  I chose to keep it simple. Use phrases instead of sentences and keep it light hearted.  The pictures that I selected were personal and showed me as a cute happy kid or me today. My other pictures complimented my story and were designated highlights from my narrative and I chose them because they were examples of pieces that assisted me throughout my journey toward literacy. My instrumental musical choice was one that I selected based on its title.  “Butterfly” could describe my literary journey.  My expression and creativity was bottled up inside like a beautiful butterfly waiting to escape from its tightly wrapped cocoon. Looking back upon the peer review, I found that I only used some of their suggestions. Upon reflection, I may have had a preconceived notion of the direction I wished my slideshow to take.  Once I read the comments of others about my finished product, I could draw further conclusions. I am glad that my theme of struggle and success came across in both the narrative and the slideshow. I may be should have included a few more slides just so that one idea flowed into another like stepping stones on a path. While the path seemed clear to me, it clearly wasn’t to the observer and that was a problem. My intent to keep the phrases short was meant to make things clean and precise but, in fact ended up having the opposite effect. Because this was the first time that I had ever used “Animoto”, I was unfamiliar and unsure about it. Next time, I intend to take extra consideration to how the viewer may respond and react. What I learned most was that because it’s my story, I know it. But an outsider does not. I need to make sure the slideshow can be understood from an outsider’s perspective.

Writing this narrative about my literary struggle was an interesting project. It was enlightening to me from both a writer’s perspective and a personal one. Deciding the theme and going through the creative process was easy, but opening up about me to others was not and neither was allowing my writing to be critiqued. A student writer embarks on a literary journey and finds that it parallels their life. I wanted to show I could write despite my slow start. I wanted to demonstrate my new found confidence in my literary skills. What I found was that I have made many strides, but I still have a long way to go. The journey never ends.