Writer's Journal #7

At first I had thought the assignment was a little silly and unnecessary. As I was working on it though, I realized that each time I was free writing, I had written down a key idea that I would not have come up with otherwise. This was a completely new experience for me and I enjoyed it! I did not set a timer for the three minutes but looking back, I probably should have just to see if maybe I could have written even more. The time limit could have pressured me to write more in a little amount of time. I liked using the looping activity as a reflection sort of because it helped me realize where my thoughts were going and what my brain was thinking each time I elaborated more on a specific idea.

My topic was about how in 8th grade when I was home schooled, my teacher assigned us to do a persuasive essay on any topic we wanted it to be about. I chose a pro-life versus pro-choice essay and did heavy research to make my essay as lengthy and detailed as possible with good arguments. As I started doing the looping assignment it became apparent to me that the whole point of projects such as the persuasive essay is to learn. Every time we write about anything, we learn new topics based off the research done for the project, or we reinforce the things we already have learned and retain it in our memories better.

As an inventional tool I believe the looping activity was good way to branch off from a central idea that we had already chosen to write about. If I had not had an idea already, it would have been difficult to start the looping activity. I was helpful once I knew what I was going to write about. By going a step at a time, I was able to see where my brain process was and able to transition from one important point to another and then afterwards, pick up the key sentences. It was unhelpful in regards to coming up with fresh new ideas. I basically had to go off of ideas that were coming up in my brain as I was writing. I would use it for more narrative type writing or less structured projects. I would not use it for research based assignments because those tend to stick with a structure and fact based essay.