Thoughts on Drafting

After finishing the first draft of my QRG, I can now look back on the process that went into writing the draft. By doing this I will be able to evaluate my writing process and identify areas that are good and those that need improvement.

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The information from the books about PIE was extremely helpful throughout the writing process. This information helped me to organize my information effectively within the separate paragraphs of my draft. This style of paragraph allows for some flexibility in structure and content but always ensures that the ideas are organized in a manner that makes sense and strengthens the argument being made. This type of paragraph is both easy for the reader to understand and for the writer to write. Without the book's information on this topic, I probably would have written my paragraphs slightly differently, which might have resulted in them being less effective.

Most other information in the book was relatively unhelpful. To start, the book concerns itself with conventions and advice in how to write a rhetorical analysis, which is different from what the QRG is. This means that some of the information in the book doesn't apply to the QRG, which greatly reduces its value. Also, the book give information on how to write standard papers in a standard format; while this is in general a good thing to do, I personally believe that the most effective texts are those that are able to express their ideas in a unique way or from a unique perspective. The rules in the book are good in general, but if followed exactly, will lead to a solid but commonplace paper being the result. This also limits the usefulness of the information in the book to me.

Writing a QRG was certainly a new experience for me, but it was one that I found came naturally to me. I have always been good, sometimes too good, at expressing my ideas quickly and succinctly, which made this style a very easy one for me adapt to.