# 15 Answers to Q's about my writing process

How did I start?
I ran a list in my head of experiences that had happened to me recently and instances that I grew personally from. I wrote down a couple of ideas and expanded on them briefly, then later chose the story that I felt I had the most to say about and wanted to share with others.

How did you choose your focus?
I pride myself on being driven to pursue my teaching career and working with special children. I wanted my focus to highlight my love for working with my campers, but also how it can be difficult to do so successfully when my thoughts were pre-occupied with my personal life. There is nothing I am more passionate about than working with teens with autism and I was almost horrified with myself for letting my focus slip when a man was not giving me the attention I desired. My focus is my turning point of when I let go of my personal hang-ups and fully zoned in to what made me truly happy.

What did I leave out? what did I change? what did I emphasize?
I left out details of my relationship from the previous summer, I don’t like to this about it often because it is still painful. Rejection always hurts so I was reluctant in pouring out the truly good times we spent together. I didn’t change anything which now that I think about it I probably should change some names, I would be very embarrassed if my essay fell onto the eyes of who I wrote about. I wanted to emphasize the relationship I have with my campers more so than the relationship with my co-worker that went sour. My campers are truly inspiring and I did not want my essay to revolve around the wrong character.

Where did I get stuck and how did I get unstuck?
I got stuck with arranging my segments. I know I needed to include background history before any reader could understand what I was talking about. I wanted to do it in a way that wasn’t so straight forward so I did it with an journal entry I wrote. This gave my audience just a taste of history without being so blunt.

What were my major revisions?
My major revisions took place during my last paragraph, tying the story together. I had to write it and re-write it a bunch of times in order to give my story meaning and reflection. It originally was very unclear and sort of just ended without any direction.

How did my life (not on the page) affect my writing process?
My life is made up of very similar daily routines that do not change much from week to week. I work every morning in a day care, I go straight to school, go home and work with 2 different boys twice a week in the afternoons. I have enough pockets of time to write and do my work although it is often stressful, but who can honestly say they don’t have stress in their life. My writing process was not affected negatively or positively by my daily routines.

Where and when did I write my best? What time?
I write my best during the day, I seem to need daylight to stay focused. Once nighttime falls I am tired and cannot focus as well in getting any type of work done. I write mostly during small breaks at home between work and school. I am good at sitting down and getting what I need to say out, I don’t do so well in starting and stopping – I tend to lose focus and forget main points I want to hit on.

What writing rituals did I engage in?
Journaling, free-writing, getting messy ideas out with any detail I can think of.

How did I use thinking, talking and writing to develop my paper?
I reflected upon my experience and thought about all the small details that went into my story. I did some free-writing to get everything out so I wouldn’t forget anything. I did not do much talking about my story with others besides in class. Working together in my group helped because we found that we all had a similar story regarding being a girl and how a man negatively affected our lives. (to put it frankly)

How did I know when I was finished and how did I decide where to start?
I knew I was finished when my whole story came together with the reflection. The reflection was the hardest to get out in words. I could physically feel my reflection and how it changed me but I found it difficult to convey this to others. I decided to start from the middle of my experience, if I had started from the very beginning it would be too long and most likely lost my audience with too many details.