1

Anthony Nims

Maddie Roepe

Writing 2

10 December 2023

Metacognitive Reflection

Metacognitive. Quite the word, and quite the subject it pertains to. When looking back on

my time spent studying the subject of writing, I can’t say that this word was at all in my

vocabulary, nor did I have any idea what it meant, for that matter. But to now understand its

meaning, the awareness and reflection of one's own thoughts, progress, and learning, I feel goes

hand in hand with many things absorbed over the span of the last four months.

Writing has always been, to some degree, an integral part of my day to day life, and one

that I thought I had pinned down. Not anything to boast at all about, but an ever-constant piece of

my routine that I felt confident in. So it came as no surprise that when I first enrolled into

Writing 2, an “entry level” writing course as described by my counselor, I was expecting an easy

A. Coast off what I already know and move on to the next class. My strategy and approach to

writing going in was one that I had reliably found success in. My idea was always to keep

everything as organic as possible. Skip the outlines, and the charts, and just slap pen to paper and

allow the thoughts and ideas to bleed onto the page. It had nothing to do with laziness or

disorganization, it was more of an attempt to preserve the genuinity of what I write. I liked to

keep laser focus on the writing itself, and view it as a natural process, a sort of flow-state
 2

maneuver. My rationale being that the most powerful and meaningful words appear organically.

That surely Hemmingway would sit down, light a cigarette and scribble away without so much

as a stutter, that surely he would skip the charts and organizers and get right to the point.

Around comes the first few weeks, and if I recall correctly, we were studying genres. I

thought that to be simple enough. Letters begin with “Dear”. Narratives involve the first person

tense. So on, so forth, make the rest up as I go along. Again, a very fast and loose approach to

composition. However, now the conversation of rhetoric is being brought up, and grammatical

conventions, tone, and word usage, all of which are unique to their own genre, and now I’m

starting to see that it is not at all as simple as a few loose conventional choices, but rather each

genre is a complex network of rhetorical intent . I recall being particularly intrigued by a piece

called “Navigating Genre” by Kerry Dirk, in which Dirk states, “When something new happens

that requires a response, someone must create that first response. Then when that situation

happens again, another person uses the first response as a basis for the second, and eventually

everyone who encounters this situation is basing his/her response on the previous ones, resulting

in the creation of a new genre. ” Genre was simply another way of differentiating the intent

between writings, and it was fascinating to think that each genre in essence can be traced back to

its own situation, that required its own unique intent.

Now came time for my first writing assignment, and I chose to put together a narrative

short-story, specifically in response to a psychological article regarding the effects of forest

immersion on mood and psyche. Ordinarily I would have kept it simple, focused entirely on
 3

making it sound pretty and roll off the tongue, and made sure my character and story were

interesting. This time, however, I was invested in pinning down the genre of a short story itself. I

looked back on short stories I had enjoyed in the past, such as The Monkey’s Paw and Skin, and

found that these short stories and others all shared commonalities unique to the genre they were a

part of. Obviously they were written concisely, but they also followed a pattern of having only a

few characters, stayed within one setting, had a straightforward plot surrounding one central

theme, and usually involved some sort of moral. As I applied these conventions, it was almost as

if I was watching the genre take shape. This was now a short-story, not just a story that is short,

and I felt that I had gotten a solid grasp on what it meant to understand the genre at its finer

points.

Moving on into the back half of the quarter is where things started to get real. Academic

research was not one of my stronger skills at this point in time. That is to say, I could do it just

fine, but I preferred not to meddle with writings that required such resources. Nonetheless, this

was the area in my writing studies that I definitely struggled with the most. This involved the

most planning, the most charts and organizers, and the most material that wasn’t created by me,

and needless to say I was not a fan. I ended up finding some help in the form of the article

“Reading Games…” by Karen Rosenburg. In it, Rosenberg breaks down her approach to

digesting scholarly articles, such as breaking the article into chunks, extracting information from

each chunk, and using that information to go back and pull out only the most important details

needed for your supporting evidence. This proved to be incredibly useful in researching my
 4

topic, allowing me to select better and stronger sources, and made me a stronger researcher in my

other classes as well.

Writing WP2 was most definitely my biggest challenge in the class. On my first time

around, I struggled connecting with the sources, but had a clear understanding of how I wanted

to present my research in the form of a theoretical narrative. When I went back to revise, I found

that I had lots of good sources, and instead of lumping them together as one condensed point,

decided to spread them out to offer individual perspectives of trauma and writing composition.

This made for a smoother conversation, and allowed for a diverse set of information and

contrasting viewpoints to how trauma is most adequately interpreted by the study of writing. I

also came back with a deeper understanding of connecting this information to the scholarly

conversation. By breaking down a source, I was able to pluck out only the information that was

relevant to my conversation, and carefully apply it to each area that it best fit in.

Both of these pieces very much came alive in the revision process. By the time I had

reached the end of the quarter, I had gained a more complex understanding of the steps that go

into crafting, organizing, and executing a final draft. In the case of WP1, I had gained a concrete

understanding of rhetoric within the genre, and was able to use that to craft a better short story

that included all the conventions I previously mentioned. I was also able to reevaluate my

translation of a scholarly article and supporting articles more clearly, as I had gained further

insight on how to use these sources to strengthen a claim. Adequately emphasizing these

translations by reanalyzing and breaking down the articles allowed for a clearer communication
 5

from the scholarly article to the story, and ultimately made for a more interesting story

altogether. In terms of WP2, my work on breaking down scholarly sources allowed me to hone in

on the important information I already had from the sources I chose. This allowed me to

effectively organize my points individually, and separate them based on the different corners of

the conversation I wished to discuss, ultimately making for a direct explanation of the

conversation at hand.

To summarize my takeaways from this course, I do still stand by the idea that writing

should be a process that focuses on being organic. With that being said, I have a newfound

appreciation for the steps that go into using these organic thoughts to build a more complete and

well supported piece of writing. I now believe that there very much exists a happy medium

between the two. Writing, as I have come to find out, is still very much concerned with genuinity

and spontaneity, but elements such as genre analysis, rhetorical context, strong research, and a

detailed revision plan do not diminish the flow of good writing. Rather, they allow for an

opportunity to strengthen the ideas you already have, and to create a well thought out plan for the

goal that you wish to achieve through a composition. Doing this will allow me to go forward and

avoid some of the blocks that I hit with writing solely based on feel, and give me a good idea of

what my finished product can look like ahead of time, in addition to making my intention within

my work abundantly clear. I can confidently say that I have gained a newfound appreciation for

the writing process, and will be using this to the benefit of my future writing endeavors, both in

the scholastic and professional world.

Works Cited

Dirk, Kerry. “Navigating Genres.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing Volume 1, edited by

Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemlianksky, Parlor Press, 2010, pp. 249-262.

Rosenberg, Karen. Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources.” Writing Spaces:

Readings on Writing Volume 2, edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, Parlor

Press, 2011, pp. 210-220.