Reflection on Project 3

Now that I've finished my Project 3 public argument, I'm reflecting on my writing process and the steps I took to complete the paper, which will help me with our final project as well.

Manske, Magnus. "Spring flowers at sunset near Perido, AZ." 2/15/13 via
Wikimedia Commons. Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

1. In order to make the article more of a refutation argument, I focused on refuting each of the steps in the drought plan in my final draft, which was a shift from my first draft.  This added more structure and organization to my argument.  I also shifted the audience from city government officials to Tucson residents, because I was already sort of leaning that way, and it made more sense, given my platform of a newspaper, which Tucson residents read.
2. In reconsidering my thesis, I narrowed my focus to talk about how the drought plan should involve residents more specifically, instead of just talking about general weakness in the plan, and how I didn't think we were doing enough.  In doing this, I was able to make much more pointed arguments, and it was much easier to handle my paper, and narrowed how much research I had to do, which instead would have been much more to also try and understand industrial and agricultural water use as well.
3. I made these changes partially because of a reconsideration of audience, and also because it made the paper shorter, more manageable, and fit better with the platform I was working with.
4. In narrowing my topic, as I mentioned I was able to make more pointed refutations, which helped my credibility.  Before, in my rough draft, I was making more broad statements, without actually specifically bringing up a certain part of the plan, and then proving how it wasn't effective and could be improved.
5. These changes will better address my audience and venue because now my intended audience lines up perfectly with the people who will actually read my article given its venue.  This is an issue that Tucson residents should be concerned about, and it will be Tucson residents who will read the Arizona Daily Star.  By addressing how residents should already be working to reduce their water consumption, I'm making the article more relevant to the audience of the venue, than if the article were directed only at city council members.
6. I didn't do a lot of local revisions concerning sentence structure.  Mostly when I write I have varied enough sentence structure in my first draft that it's not as big as an issue compared to global issues.  However, I did work on cutting wordy parts out of sentences.
7. Local changes don't really help my audience as much as global changes do.  Rather, they just make the article to be a more interesting and well-written read.
8. I didn't really have to reconsider the conventions of my genre when revising, because I had already thought a lot about them while writing the first draft.  Mostly I just had to ensure that my paragraphs where short enough that the article was readable with adequate white space.
9. In reflecting, I realize that most of my revisions are global.  I think this year, it's taken me a while to fully understand what the project is asking, and how I'm going to produce a comprehensive response.  Multiple times, I have believed that what I have written in my first draft has answered what the prompt asked, but then in discussion found out I was lacking critical parts, or could redo my organization.  I'd like to think that by now I am a strong enough writer that I can devote more of my time thinking of ideas and the big picture of the assignment, rather than focus on local revisions involving sentence structure and word choice.