Magazine Reflection Numero Dos!

Since I started writing both my papers, the both got much greater in detail, and by the time I was through, they answered the question "So what?" a lot better. After a lot of copy editing, I managed to cut through the clutter and get straight to my point. Facts first, details later. That would probably sum up my number one change of mind over the course of this project.

Although I have two strong final drafts, they could always be better. If I were to start off knowing what I know now, and came to class with a first draft like the final draft I have now, then by the time I was done, it could be even more perfected, and the techniques I applied could be further used to refine my work.

One example of how my writing improved was the way in which it was structured. I learned to jump right to the "So what" - and worry about the "how"s a bit later. For example, I had a portion of my water quality editorial that started out like this:
"According to High Tech High Media Arts studies, Enterococci levels at Crystal Pier unexplainably shot from 0 to 158 parts per 100 milliliters between November 12^th and 13^th, which exceeds the limit of 104/100ml. It had not rained any time within the past 3 days, and since tests are only weekly instead of daily, there were no warnings not to enter the water. This means that water at your local beach could be contaminated, and there would be nothing to keep you away."
And then it ended up like this: "According to High Tech High Media Arts studies, enterococci levels at Crystal Pier unexplainably shot from 0 to 158 parts per 100 milliliters between November 12th and 13th, exceeding the limit of 104/100ml. This means that water at Crystal Pier exceeded the legal limit for fecal matter by over 50%, and the people in the water that day had no idea. This is because it had not rained any time within the past three days, and since the weekly tests had been cancelled at the time, there were no warnings not to enter the water."

I learned that in writing, less is more, and that I only have a few precious words to get my point out there, so I can't use my words sparingly. Each one needs to count. I also learned the difference between a concert sentence and a pancake sentence, and what I can do to keep my sentences and paragraphs from becoming pancakes.

Magazine Reflection: In The Beginning

During the process of making this magazine, getting myself started and time management were the things that I had no problem with. I knew what I wanted to do right from the beginning, and when there were drafts to be written and revisions to be made, I always managed my time so that not a second was wasted. I always made sure I had some sort of long term plan, as well as goals for what I wanted to get done by the end of the day.

Although I was very time effective with my revisions, I still had some problems in terms of critiques and revisions. I originally thought both of the papers I wrote were great, but then I would give them out to get critiqued and they would come back to me all marked up. It was a problem for me to take all of the advice, since at first I strongly disagreed with some of it. I would work past this by going to the person and asking them why they did what they did, and debating until we came to an agreement. There were also times when something was majorly wrong, but it was something that some people didn't catch, and it was only after I cleared through all the rest of the little problems that the big one actually stood out. Once that was done however, I just needed to spend some time making the changes, and I was all set.

My main example for work (since it was one of my main sources for one of my articles) was Chandler's article, because it was incredibly well written, and depended on facts, sources, and logic. It (as well as Randy) taught me to get to my point quickly, and make sure I follow the rules of professional writing. I had to make sure each word, sentence, and paragraph, flowed from one to the next. Once I had this done, I had my final product.