Author: Sara Reyes

One of the many genres I consistently come across is informative/educational. The conventions are usually argumentative, lots of opinions being shared and lots of frustrated people. Information can be interpreted differently especially when it comes to people point of view and applying it to a specific scenarios.

Meetings can go on for hours sometimes even days. One source can say “yes” while the other source says “no”. So half the time we are all frustrated and have to wrap up a 1-2 hour long meeting to conduct additional research and circle back with the new information found. Not every informative article I come across is transparent. Most of the time their is a double meaning behind the information I read. Which is why meetings can go for a long period of time. For the most part, the meeting are professional but their has been times when arguments can arise. When the disagreements come up I tend to laugh just listening to the back and forth of professionals arguing because they either read too deep into the information provided or because they found a different section that differs to what we were already discussing but, from the same source.

My genre is information because it is not something you can change. It is not an opinion, it is not based on someone’s life, non-fiction etc.  The information provided is solid and based off off facts. It will either tell you how to do it, why to do it and/or when to do it.

Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” is an autobiographical essay with a hint of humor. She speaks first hand on some of the things she had to do for her mother because her mom English was “broken”. He experiences had humor in it when she had to speak to the boss on the phone on behalf of her mom (while making believe she was her mom) but her mom was yelling in the background the whole time. She experienced embarrassing moments as she passed for her mom speaking perfect English, but in person her mom spoke broken English. Just knowing that they knew it was her speaking on her mom behalf made her feel embarrassed.

My view on writing has definitely changed after reading “Shitty First Draft”. I always thought that as a professional writer it was easy for them to pour out their thoughts and ideas onto paper. I didn’t think that they too struggled with their writing being that they are professionals.

My writing process is very similar to Anne’s. I tent to first write out all my ideas on paper as a first draft. Not too worried about how it comes out. I then go back and clean up the first draft by crossing words out or highlighting sentences to correct or words to replace. Like Anne, I tend to get frustrated as I continue to write because it is not coming out the way I want.

One thing she does differently that I will be doing is that she would wait for the next day to then go back with a clear mindset and revise her work. I usually break night just to get my writing just the way I want. Like Anne stated, “eventually let yourself trust the process”.