TOW Reflection (TOW 29)

After rereading three of my TOWs from this year (Drew Brees, Michael Jordan at 50, & Chris Pronger) and noting the differences in my writing tendencies and strengths, I have began to understand further places where my writing has improved and what facets of my writing technique I find most effective. The first, most  noticeable pattern that I found in my writing was my change in introduction length. In the first post, there really was no intro, as I simply jumped right into explaining the article. In my second and third posts, I provided more context and background to support the following information, with the third's explanation being a bit more expansive. What I noticed is that, as the introduction grew, my creativity in hooking the audience grew. This observation has shown me the value in carefully constructing one's introduction, while still remembering to keep intros concise and the focus on the content of a piece. Along with my improvement of introductions, I feel that I have become a much stronger journalist through this process. Before, my writing would be full summarization and little analysis or consequence. However, this course has made my summaries shorter, but not lacking in important information, an crucial skill that helps keep hold of the audience's interest. One habit that must change for my writing is preventing myself from writing formulaically, which happens so often to me with other assignments. When teachers give checklists and certain required pieces of information, I usually do not stray far from the checklist and write in the same order as the list. After reading all three of my TOWs, I think that a bit more creativity here could really aid in the perception of my writing. As I have now noticed from this new TOW assignment, TOWs are more than making sure we are keeping up with modern styles of writing: they are to apply the new skills from class to everyday writing. These assignments ultimately benefitted me as an author, as I am able to look at pieces from the perspective of the reader and learn from my past mistakes. These assignments have become a very useful reflection process for seeing the development and future solutions for my writing in its entirety.