McCormack ENG 101 November 15, 2013
Iterative (What do I have so far and where am I going?) First Draft
Iterative in this case means in process. This is the first draft of your project and you may feel like you are not ready to write yet and certainly not ready to share. But you are. This semester, if you have learned anything, I hope you have learned that writing is thinking. We don’t create a completed draft in our heads and then just sit down and “record” the draft on our keyboard. The process of writing, of putting words on the screen or on the paper, produces new thoughts and new ideas and helps clarify and expand already existing thoughts and ideas. As we write, we figure things out, we find new paths, and we create new insights. You may have had this experience already as you wrote your proposal, or worked with your secondary sources in the annotated bibliography or developed and completed primary research. We don’t think and then write; these two processes of thinking and writing are recursive, one informs the other.
So, follow these steps to create your first draft.
1. Collect all of your materials (writing, proposal, annotated bibliography, primary research etc.) and put the documents into one project folder on your computer.
2. Open up a new word document and save it as First Draft. Go into your project folder and open one document. Cut and past it into your First Draft. Do this for each document. Give some thought to order as you are cutting and pasting. Where should things go and why.
3. Go through your messy First Draft and label the parts with descriptive Sub titles, such as: Primary Research; Secondary Sources; Two sentence synopsis from Showcase; Possible Closing Paragraph… Make these subheads in bold and capitals and underlines.
4. Starting at the beginning of the document, write a few sentences for each section you think is missing. For example, you could write: Here I will insert another secondary source. Here is where I will write in the results of my primary research. Here is where the opening should go. Also write in reminders like these: I think the opening will be about my own experiences with Reality TV. I need to do one more interview with Jake Snubgrass and I need to ask him about corporate control of the media, since he is an expert in the field.
5. Go through your draft one more time. Write one paragraph at the start of each section where you explain what the section is and what it adds to your project. What does this section do? What does it tell the reader? Then go to the end of the section and write two sentences about what is missing from this section. What do you still have to do.
6. BRING A PRINTED COPY OF YOUR DRAFT TO CLASS ON THURSDAY.
Teaching Writing at John Jay College 