Casey Dugan

The Mysterious Writing Process

When we were first assigned this audio essay I thought two things. First was, my

voice is gross when its recorded and two, what am I even going to talk about. I was at a

complete loss as to what I could possibly stretch into a story. Reading all the narratives in

class kept me further from finding my spark. I did not have any big moments or memorable

literacy interactions. It was not until we read Matt Devine’s “Literacy Autobiography” that I

finally understood the assignment. It was about overcoming big obstacles, or facing

extreme adversity. I could be a simple moment in my life and if well written, I could spin it

into a beautiful emotional piece. Now that I knew what I had to I just needed to find a spark.

During the free write, I found it. When Dr. E asked where your favorite place to read was

my bed vividly popped into my head. All the feelings came rushing back to me at once and

the words just flowed onto the paper. I did not immediately know that was what I wanted

to write about, as it was not until after I returned to my dorm and I reread my work that I

realized how much I missed that feeling of my bed. Instantly I knew how I could write my

paper.

I, first, began rambling about my bed, the colors, my room orientation and other

unnecessary things to fill the page, but then I started to right about actual emotion and

feelings that I got. After writing four pages of half crap half decent writing, I reread

everything and cut the superfluous words. What I was left with was choppy sentences so I

went back and reworked them to fit together. I reread it out loud several times in order

hear the cohesion and I added parts when necessary. The way I find grammatical errors is I

print out my essay with the font changed and I read it aloud. This helps me to find errors I

would have missed completely. It was hard to practice reading out loud when I had

grammatical errors because I would stumble over my words and I tried to make sense of

what I had written on the spot. It took about three days for me to finally get happy with the

way it looked on paper and for me to consider it a finished paper to record. When I was

finally happy with what I had, I began recording to see what I sounded like on tape. With

my cold I did not sound to good so I recorded it several times until I found something I

could use. However I had recorded before I was truly done editing and I had to go back and

repeat the recording process to add in my changes. I am extremely self conscious about my

voice on tape and I listened to my recording over and over to make sure I did not mess up

anywhere or speak to close to the microphone. To make sure I was not skewed by my

hatred of my voice I asked my roommate and my mother to listen to the recorded

soundtrack and asked them questions to make sure the right emotions were conveyed

through my voice. Once they agreed that it was as good as I thought I concluded my project

complete.