Shitty First Drafts

James A. Irvine
Professor Jill Yoder
Writing 101
15 September 2014

Shitty First Draft
This Short Chapter I can really relate to because to be completely honest almost every single persons first draft of a paper is not very good. I know personally there are usually a bunch of grammatical errors as well things just not flowing how you want them to.
But hey that is the point of a first draft you take a crappily put together piece of paper and through peer reviews you slowly but surely mold it into a great paper. Some people do not like peer review or do not want people to be to “harsh” with their papers but I feel that is the only way to approach a rough draft. A rough draft is you just throwing your thoughts on to a paper and hoping that it forms decent paragraphs and makes sense.
The first draft should be covered in red pen marks showing where certain sentences would work better with the paper or maybe telling you that a sentence or word shouldn’t be there. This is how you learn, through trial and error you make a good paper. I do not know how many times I think I have a great paper and then I have somebody look over it and it seems that there is more red ink then black. But hey isn’t this what the rough draft is for?
Nobody is a great rider to begin with even author have to look over there papers more than once that is the beauty of a rough draft. You can be a crappy writer and still get a paper that will get you that grade that you want. This article made me feel better about myself because it says that it is okay to have a poorly put together paper in the first draft it is just a foundation to work off of. And believe me my first drafts are definitely a work in progress.

Thought paper #1

James A. Irvine
Professor Jill Yoder
Writing 101
25 August 2014
Thought Piece #1
After Reading pages 1-11 in Writing about Writing a few questions that I had haven before reading had been answered but also have some things that I am questioning even more now that I have been reading. My goal of this thought piece is to break down and show just what exactly I have started to understand and what I still struggle with after reading this section.
The first one that I am questioning being what exactly is Rhetoric, by no means am I saying that I know exactly what a rhetoric is but I am starting to get a grasp. I have been using this type of writing without even knowing it, the way that how you write depends on who is reading it. Not only am I now starting to understand rhetorics but the whole section that it fall underneath which would be constructs.
Constructs are another thing that I really didn’t comprehend nor understand before reading these pages. The fact that even though it is just words on a page from our own personal experience we construct an idea of what we believe the author is trying to say. This just baffles my mind I would have never thought I did that when I am reading but looking back now it makes since, the fact like it seems the writer has written this book just for you.
But like I said there are still some questions that I have after reading this section, the first and foremost being what exactly threshold concept is? I understand that each threshold is a category but that is about as far as I can take it. The example of the math problem saying that a fraction is just another way to write a percentage it cleared it up a little bit. But still how does this relate to writing? I am sure that once we dive into this book more of this will become clear.
Another thing that is not really making sense is how the book is saying that writing is just a bunch of conventions. How the “rules” of writing can differ just by the group of readers and writers, while with one group something could be completely acceptable while with another group it could have serious consequences.
But I am sure a majority of these questions will be answered once we get into the book further and I am sure I will have plenty of more questions as well. But isn’t that the point of taking this writing class? To be able to not only write better, but to be able to understand not only what we are doing while writing but also what the author is doing while we are reading.