First Reflection Session:

My question of what the role of cats are in The Windup Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami and We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson interested me because I knew that Murakami often uses cats as gateways to deeper meanings and I wanted to know if that’d be consistent in another cat character. I found that both cats serve as a gateway to explaining the unknowns of the plot, being the main characters internal thoughts in Jackson’s novel and the conflict in Murakami’s novel. My process is to gather and sort all the relevant information given and link them into claims; what's challenging about this process is that it’s hard to gauge what’s excess information and what’s repetitive. It’s worth investigating because authors choice of characters and details each serve a purpose, however minor; therefore to fully understand the plot each minor character is worth investigating.

Second Reflection Session:

While writing my first draft, I learned a lot about myself as a writer. I learned in order for me to write well, I need to know my content well. Thoroughly knowing my content improves the clarity of my writing; if I know what I want to say, I just need to focus on how I want to say things. I realised this when I was overwhelmed by the amount of content and insight I found; there were a lot of options for the focus of my interpretation of the text. I had difficulty accepting that I couldn’t use all the information I gathered and realised I needed to be selective. This was difficult since I was unclear about my argument, making it hard to be selective on what I should use to support my argument and shouldn’t. I realised I needed to know my arguments and claims before I work with the evidence to support me. I’m concerned about my use of research and whether it’s redundant. Additionally, I’m concerned about my long sentences and know I need to cut wordy sentences; the best way for me to resolve this is by reading the whole thing through thoroughly.

Third and Final Reflection Session:

my final product. Corrections since my first draft have been challenging, as I had to balance between expanding - on secondary sources to improve my claims and credibility - and cutting my word count. I struggled with being selective with my overwhelming evidence. I realised my attachment to interesting pieces of evidence was interfering with the clarity of my claims, and choosing a few clear examples instead, strengthens my claims. Overall, I learned throughout this process that the most important step for my success as a writer is to solidify my understanding of the sources. This makes forming claims, identifying authors’ intentions and writing clearly and concisely, easier. Knowing this will help motivate me to invest in essay research in university and helped me better understand myself as a writer.

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