To articulate a simple idea: easy. To call upon one’s mastery of language perfected over years of school in order to tell a story: a little more difficult. This is the bulk of my project: taking everything that I know about a subject area, synthesizing it with information obtained from interviews, and supplementing it with research where applicable. Today was just the first of several writing days of my intensive.
I continued working on my introductory story on Mr. Boehm and completed the better part of the first draft on the narrative of the integration of technology in the Middle School, using direct quotes from my interview with Ms. Grefe.
The writing process took longer than I had expected because of how I like to work. While some individuals like writing what they can and choose to incorporate missing facts, quotes, and other information in the editing stage, I prefer searching for information I need as I write. This meant that I stopped several times in an hour because I needed to double check the proper capitalization for a certain title, verify the exact years, or make sure that I used correct terminology.
Something that took a long time is deciding upon which quotes to use. Quotes needed to be seamlessly integrated within the narrative, and had to be transcribed exactly from the audio recording. Additionally, each quote took some time to find within the audio recording.
But one thing is for sure: I am definitely enjoying writing. Although it is a slow, painstaking process, it feels good to have accomplished what I had worked on today. I am working hard to make my narratives engaging and understanding to the reader, and I feel that I am doing a good job of this so far. I had originally felt that I should have gotten more done today, but I now realize that today was in fact very productive, and I am pleased that all of the time I have spent has only yielded high quality work.
This reads well- thanks for sharing your thoughts on the writing process itself and not just on the research part. Any quotes or research that you have found particularly impactful or surprising?
ReplyDeleteIn terms of these two stories, I have not yet found anything especially eye-opening. I am still waiting for other quotes for my story on Mr. Boehm, and I lived through the iPad integration program (the year of the pilot program was my seventh grade year), so nothing has been far out of the ordinary. I did, however, get a nice quote from Mr. Anning about Ms. Grefe and her presentations to the board, and that has been incorporated into the narrative.
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