- What do you think might be gained from reflecting on a completed piece of writing? What might reflection help you understand about your rhetorical decisions or your writing process?
- In what ways do you think reflective writing differs from other types of writing?
- What are some ways that you might reflect on the writing you do for this course? Where and how would you do this reflection?
- Which of the WPA Outcomes does reflective writing seem to relate most directly to and how?
I think a great sense of understanding can be gained from reflecting on a completed piece. When I say a great understanding, I mean many things. You understand how the piece looks like from a different perspective, flaws you hadn't noticed before now stick out like a sore thumb, but most importantly you understand what that piece meant to you and why you wrote it.
Reflecting on my own work has definitely helped me understand my own skills as a writer and how I write. In film school I often had a hard time understanding why scripts weren't turning out the way I had hoped when I wrote them, but now looking back I can tell you exactly what was wrong with them and why. Writing scripts I've found is all about utilizing rhetorical decisions to their maximum. You need to convince the reader that what they are reading would make for a great film. The way I would write scenes were often aimless and based off of an idea I found to be interesting or exciting. But often times they simply did not translate well into a scene for a show or movie, and at that time I didn't understand. Looking back now with a better understanding of film and how audiences relate to a scene, I can now see where my problems were.
Reflective writing differs from other types of writing in the sense that it's almost like a scientific investigation where you are exploring and testing every facet of writing, whether it be your own or someone else's. You are truly learning about how the written piece works, how it sends a message, and whether there are problems that keep it from being better communicated with its target audience. Reflecting on this now, I can see how I often avoided reflections. Being a very emotional person, I tend to make irrational decisions. It was so easy to throw away a piece of writing that I didn't like. If it wasn't good enough I didn't even want to look at it, and that comes from a very self-critical place deep within myself. My past reflections would only sink in when I randomly allowed them to, and when it was years later and I accidentally stumbled across one of my old scripts I hadn't thrown away- because it barely made the cut to my own impossible standards.
When it comes to which WPA Outcome relates most to reflection, I believe it to be critical thinking because it really pushes your ability to think in specific ways, to look at a certain piece of writing from a different perspective. You truly have to exercise your mind's ability to scrutinize and investigate, and you'll have to make thoughtful decisions.
Works cited:
Calcifer1. "My Street Looked like the Beginning of the Apocalypse, Yesterday. Thought You Might Enjoy." Reddit.com. N.p., 15 June 2015. Web. 22 Jan. 2017.
Calcifer1. "My Street Looked like the Beginning of the Apocalypse, Yesterday. Thought You Might Enjoy." Reddit.com. N.p., 15 June 2015. Web. 22 Jan. 2017.