This week, as I didn’t go to class, I think I’ll take the time to talk about the annotation process for the book I’m reading. I think I originally discounted the value of other literary critiques as the basis for my annotation. While I originally assumed that the annotations would be based on my own interpretations of the text, while completing my draft/outline of annotations, I quickly realized that the opposite would be true. I found it more important to base my argument in the actual quotations that compelled me to include the resources than in my own comprehensive analysis of the text in the context of the resources. I think this brings a challenge to my usual writing process as I tend to rely on paraphrasing and a holistic argument rather than the individual interpretation of single lines in collaboration with a single resource. However, I think this allows a much deeper analysis of the small segments of text that I’ve chosen to analyze and will ultimately make my critical introduction a far more cohesive argument. I think I also underestimated how many people had written relevant resources about my topic. This has forced me to do a critical analysis of the original resources I chose and ensure that they are the best resources to provide context to my analysis and support my arguments. Because I tend to write about topics that are generally more imaginative (in regards to the extent to which an academic paper can be imaginative) I’m not used to having such an abundance of resources to choose from. I think this added an interesting step into my writing process that I hope to be able to implement in the future.
