Hi everyone!

This week's readings discuss both the significance of a super rough draft, as well as tips on effective integration and utilization of sources. One of the most interesting parts of , Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott was the idea that in order to isolate great ideas in a piece of writing, sometimes it takes writing a ton of bad sentences first. Lamott states that "there may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you're supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go -- but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages'' (1). This reminded me of an activity I did in my AP Lang class in high school when we were reading "Beloved" by Toni Morrison. Chapter 22 of the novel is a "stream of consciousness," meaning that the writing included is everything and anything, uninhibited, that the character narrating thinks of. In class, we did an exercise where in one minute we would write our own stream of consciousness, while my teacher played sounds and moved props and we'd just write any thought that crossed our minds, no erasing or editing, rewording or crossing out. This reminded me of Lamott's advice on beginning a first draft. Somewhere in blurting out any kind of idea we have about our writing, we'll write one really good and profound idea, which might make it to the final draft. In committing to the fact that the first draft will in fact be "shitty," we can "take out everything [we] possibly [can], find a new lead somewhere on the second page, figure out a kicky place to end it, and then write a second draft" (2). The three or four good ideas in the first draft can shape the second draft, and the good ideas in the second draft shape the final draft, and by the time we get to the final draft, we have a pretty good idea on what our writing will focus on, and it will likely be of quality, having undergone many revisions.

In Incorporating Sources into Research Writing by Germanna Community College’s Academic Center for Excellence, I found the information regarding how sources should be used, methods of integration, and the order of integration to be extremely useful. The article states that "For every source, the student must determine the purpose of that source and how to best incorporate it into the paper. Both aspects are crucial to effectively integrating sources throughout the paper" (3). This prevents students from taking up space in their writing with random quotations that merely provide some extraneous information related to the topic of the research paper. The article lists that these are the following things sources can be used for in a research paper: "presenting facts or statistics, serving as evidence to support an argument, lending authority to an argument or idea, providing examples and illustrations, stating an opposing viewpoint, and so on" (3). Moreover, quotes can be included as summaries, paraphrased, or quoted. Regardless of which way the source is included, the integration usually follows this order: Topic sentence, introduction, use and citation, analysis of quote. I found these logistical guidelines helpful and informative, specifically how to integrate sources, and secondly a reminder to ensure the relevance and focus of sources we decide to include in our research papers.