Writing Reflection

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Why reflect on your writing?

Good writing doesn't just happen and good writers aren't born that way.

Good writers become so only after a lot of hard work and a lot of hard thinking about writing.

If you want to be a good writer, or at least a better write, then you must write -- frequently -- but that alone will not help you improve unless you study the writing of others and make comparisons between the writing of good writers and your own work.

 

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"Good writing doesn't just happen and good writers aren't born that way."

What should you reflect upon? 

Sometimes you are asked (by a writing instructor, for example) to reflect upon your writing progress and development over a specific period of time (for example, the length of a writing class).

When you look back over this period of time, how do you feel about your writing progress? Pleased, satisfied, disappointed?

How have you improved? Think of specifics, especially anything that makes you proud.

Do you do anything differently now when you write than you did before?

What are your goals for your writing?

What will you do differently the next time you write?

Look at some of your most recent writing projects. What are your strengths and weaknesses in these types of writing? What do you need to work on?

How do you feel about writing? How do you use the writing process?

Which is more important? 

Which is more important to the improvement of writing?

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Practice

Virtue_Creations says:

Practice, write about your day, your partner, your dog - whatever - just do it. Oh, and stop procrastinatinf you naughty thing. :) Don't keep going back to edit - just let it flow.

Reflection

Murry77 says:

Good writing is an art, and I like very much what you have said about making a comparison between your writing and a master's writing.
It's the same with painting, or playing an instrument, or designing... You are looking at what the great masters have done, and you are trying, and trying to reach them.

RelativePerspectives says:

Usually, once inspired, I write & then reflect. Time-wise, about 20% is writing & 80% is reflecting, editing, proofing, refining, etc. I think if I waited to reflect much on something before writing it I would miss a lot of inspirational ideas. On the other hand, some ideas take a while to fully form before writing. Good question!

KaraLynnRussell says:

That's a tough question. If you don't write, you have nothing to reflect on. Still I think my writing took a big step forward only when I began to make an earnest effort to improve what I'd already written rather than moving on to something else.

KaraLynnRussell says:

This is sort of a chicken/egg question. If you don't practice you have nothing to reflect on. But if you don't reflect on your writing, it can't improve. I'll go with reflection though. My writing took a big step forward when I earnestly began to make the effort to improve it.

Anne Watkins says:

I use running records and checklist in my classroom. These forms provide me with a simple way to assess children without wasting anytime trying to remember what the child did or does everyday. For example, a child that can string beads and make a pattern with it. I will write down this information on a checklist and it is recorded for later use.

 

Writing 

Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols (known as a writing system). Writing may use abstract characters that represent phonetic elements of speech, as in Indo-European languages, or it may use simplified representations of objects or concepts, as in east-Asian and ancient Egyptian pictographic writing forms. However, it is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio.

Writing is an extension of human language across time and space. Writing most likely began as a consequence of political expansion in ancient cultures, which needed reliable means for transmitting information, maintaining financial accounts, keeping historical records, and similar activities. Around the 4th millennium BC, the complexity of trade and administration outgrew the power of memory, and writing became a more dependable method of recording and presenting transactions in a permanent form (Robinson, 2003, p. 36). In both Mesoamerica and Ancient Egypt writing may have evolved through calendrics and a political necessity for recording historical and environmental events.

Need more guidance? 

Reflection In The Writing Classroom

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