Process Memo

Mitch Alters

Prof. Rinke

WRT 150

October 11, 2012

Literacy Narrative Process Memo

            Sitting down in class the day we started our literacy timeline, I had no idea where to start. Through out my whole life my mom always stressed how important it was to read and she would have me read to her but I never really enjoyed reading. Which made it rather difficult to start a timeline on books. So the easy and obvious choice was out of the question from the start. I then started thinking back about what I remembered to most as a child. The first thing that came to my mind was of how crazy I was. I always wanted to be in front of the class doing plays and skits. I then realized how much that changed. So, I decided to focus more on the aspect of speeches and self-concious. Once I decided on this topic, everything started to come back and it was very easy for me to write my timeline. The hardest thing was to not write too much. I was surprised how detailed I remembered events in elementary school. After doing the narrative I discovered how much I have changed. I still like to make jokes with my friends and classmates but I would never want to be in plays or talent shows. I loved all that stuff as a kid, its funny how things change. Through the whole paper I did my best to keep with the theme of speeches and it seemed to work very well. I liked that my idea was different than anyone else in our class and brought I different idea to the table. I really enjoyed making the timeline. It really brought back a lot of fun and not so fun memories that I kind of got to relive, when I was writing about them. I think that is why I wrote in so much detail on my timeline. I got so into writing about the events and re-picturing them in my head. The timeline was a great start for the literacy narrative process.

            The writing of the actual literacy narrative was very enjoyable because my timeline was very detailed, which made it easier to write. I didn’t focus on particular time or grade but instead I picked out the most important events in my timeline to make the narrative. I knew that I couldn’t use every single event because I had one for almost very single grade up to my senior and that would make a very long narrative. So, I decided to pick out the ones that would best describe and make my narrative story the best. This was rather and easy decision to choose to stick with the order of grades and not pick one event because even though my events were detailed there was not one that could stand alone in a story. With everything already being in order by grade, I decided to write mine in chronological order. This would do the best job in making an easy story to understand for my readers. It wasn’t hard to write my story like this because it was simply writing a story about my self from when I was little to now. I think if I would have jumped around from grade to grade. It may have been much more difficult for me ot write about. I did not do much prewriting for this paper because I used my timeline as the prewriting stage. It already contained all of my ideas that I was going to use in the paper and it actually was a great prewrite. I always seem to write very sloppy rough drafts and this one was no different. My peer review session really helped me make the necessary changes to make my narrative flow and make much more sense. After the peer review I made many changes. I took out a lot of details and added in some details where it was needed. I also seemed to repeat myself through the whole paper, which my partner brought to my attention. This was another change I made before turning the final paper in. My partner was very helpful, she picked up on all the changes I needed to make and made my paper much better. I always think it helps to have some else read your paper because they catch a lot more the writer sometimes misses. She was very nice and did not give me to much criticism on my paper. But the biggest thing she brought to my attention was the lack of flow and repetition through out the paper. This all in all was very helpful and helped me get a better grade on the narrative. Throughout the narrative it was hard to not think about making the paper transition into the video slideshow. I did my best to ignore the idea of making the slideshow and take everything one-step at a time. The main reason I didn’t focus on the slideshow while writing, was because I knew that it would affect the way I write. I wanted to make a good story so I could use it easily, for the slide show. It seemed to work out great for me and making the video slideshow was an easy transition.

            The most difficult about the process was making the video slideshow because I put a lot detail into my narrative that it was rather difficult in narrowing it down. My peer review picked great sentences to use for my slideshow in my rough draft. But I ended up not using any of them because I made so many changes to my paper after the peer review. She did a great job on helping me narrow down the story and I did keep some of the sentence she highlighted for my final narrative. It was very difficult to narrow our narrative down even more for the 52 character text slides. I think my best strategy was to focus mainly on main points and not go into much detail if it was not necessary. This seemed to work very well for me and made it much easier to narrow the sentences down. The pictures I used in the slideshow were mainly complementary to the slides previously before; they seemed to reinforce the last text slide. They also put the story and words into a picture, which I always liked when reading a story. I did not have much option when it came to choosing pictures for the slideshow. Since, I am from Ohio and live four hours away. There was no possible way for me to get pictures of myself. I had to result to using pictures online, I did my best to find pictures that could go along with the story and give it some more detail. I think if I would have had the chance to get pictures from home, it could have made my slideshow much better. The song I picked did not relate to my slideshow or narrative about me giving speeches. But I picked a song that fit in well with tempo of the slideshow. I really like the song Lisztomania by Phoenix and even though it didn’t relate to my narrative, I think it still fit great to show my personality.  Overall, I really like my Animoto even though it was difficult at times making it. If I did it again I would try to go home to get pictures. The pictures of me would have brought much more life to the actual slideshow and my audience could understand it better. I really enjoyed all parts of this project and I would do it again for any other topic.