The first draft of our literacy narrative serves as the best example of where I was as a writer at the beginning of the semester. The final draft of this essay was the first step I took in the right direction. There is a significant difference between these two drafts especially when it comes to coherence and paragraph focus. The first draft, as shown by the highlighted portions, was choppy with a lot of idea jumps and a lack of paragraph focus.  These issues all began in my introduction where my thesis was unclear. This unraveled a series of unfocused paragraphs and an unstructured essay.  

Since a solid thesis was missing, it was difficult to have clear topic sentences. Topic sentences are meant to guide each paragraph and support the established thesis, so, without them my paragraphs were unfocused and just ideas strung together with no organization. Additionally, my ideas were underdeveloped which made it harder to focus my paragraphs and made my draft confusing to read. 

After 2 attempts, my final draft was a lot more organized and coherent. I made sure that I had a clear thesis that addressed the prompt for the literacy narrative and used that to create good topic sentences that would focus my paragraphs. In order to catch any ideas jumps, I read each paragraph out loud and made sure that every sentence was supporting the topic sentence and the thesis.

 I also looked at the bigger picture and made sure that there was more flow between paragraphs by adding transitions or connecting back to the ideas from the pervious paragraph. This was a lot easier after developing my ideas, removing any ideas that were irrelevant to the thesis, and reorganizing paragraphs to make more sense next to each other. 

The literacy narrative was only the beginning of my writing journey but nonetheless the most reflective of how I started to grow and improve in the course. After struggling through this first essay, my first drafts were providing a strong foundation and a good start for every essay. I knew what to look for when revising and knew that my weaknesses were idea jumps, unfocused paragraphs, and a lack of coherence. 

This made revision easier. Instead of staring at my draft and not knowing where I was going wrong, I was reading and rereading my drafts to catch all the parts that were choppy or underdeveloped. Learning how to revise like this and catch all the common mistakes I make was what made me an increasingly better writer throughout the semester and what will help me continue to improve as a writer.