Editorial Report 15a

Below is my first editorial report for the final project. It is still a work in progress and I will probably end up editing more later!

Selection from ‘Rough Cut’:
T: So Emily, to start off, I want to ask you about your writing process, and how it has changed this year compared to how you wrote in high school.

E: Good question! My writing process in high school was way different from what it is now. I think the reason is because my schedule was so different. In high school, I went to school all day, came home, and then went straight to dance. Sometimes I would not get home until past 10pm. By the time I got home and showered, I wouldn’t start my homework until 11. And of course, whenever I had essays due, I would wait until the night before it was due to start writing. I would end up staying up until 4 in the morning drinking coffee, trying to keep my eyes open, doing research, creating an outline, and then writing an entire essay. Crazy, I know. And I never learned….until I got to college. I realized that writing a 10-page paper, or creating an entire video essay the night before it’s due, is not possible. In this transition, I began working on papers a little bit everyday and began to truly understand myself as a writer and how I worked. I realized that my best work did not come from writing at 12 in the morning. In fact, I would rather wake up early, well 8 am which is early for a college student, and work on essays then. Because I started managing my time better, I had more time for research and outlining. I discovered I am a heavy planner and prefer to revise as I go. I like to be prepared so after I write I don’t have to change my entire essay, but only need to make small, local revisions. Discovering my writing process is what helped me survive English 109H.

T: Wow! What a difference from high school! So I understand Bottai assigns four major projects and you get to choose which genre to use for each, but by the end of the semester you had to use all four of the genres.

Re-edited Selection:

T: So Emily, to start off, I just want to ask you about your writing process and more specifically, how it has changed over the course of this year compared to how you wrote in high school.

E: Good question! My writing process in high school was way different from what it is now. I think the reason is because my schedule was so different. In high school, I went to school all day, came home, and then went straight to dance. Sometimes I would not get home until past 10pm. By the time I got home and showered, I wouldn’t start my homework until 11. And of course, whenever I had essays due, I would wait until the night before it was due to start writing. I would end up staying up until 4 in the morning drinking coffee, trying to keep my eyes open, doing research, creating an outline, and then writing an entire essay. Crazy, I know. And I never learned….until I got to college. I realized that writing a 10-page paper, or creating an entire video essay the night before it’s due, is not possible. In this transition, I began working on papers a little bit everyday and began to truly understand myself as a writer and how I worked. I realized that my best work did not come from writing at 12 in the morning. In fact, I would rather wake up early, well 8 am, which is early for a college student, and work on essays then. Because I started managing my time better, I had more time for research and outlining. I discovered I am a heavy planner and prefer to revise as I go. I like to be prepared so after I write I don’t have to change my entire essay, but only need to make small, local revisions. Discovering my writing process is what helped me survive English 109H.

T: (laughs) I think we can all sympathize with waiting until the last minute but I’m impressed you made such a profound change. So let’s talk more about the class itself. I understand Bottai assigns four major projects and you get to choose which genre to use for each, but by the end of the semester you had to use all four of the genres, right? 

Questions:

1. How did the content change (even slightly - details matter!) when you re-edited it? Why do you think the content is being communicated more effectively in the re-edited version?

• The only thing I really changed from my rough cut was my interviewees responses to me. At first I only focused on what I was going to say and gave him one word responses to my answers. I realized that is not the correct way to structure an interview, so I gave him more of a reflective response before he asks me another question.

2. How did the form change (even slightly - details matter!) when you re-edited it? Why do you think the form is presenting the content more effectively in the re-edited version?

• The form is an interview so the only way it changed was giving Tommy (my interviewee) more lines to say which made his part a little longer.