While I was was writing my Literacy Guide to The New York Times, I learned an exponential amount of information about the writing process. One of the biggest things that I came to realize was how awful the drafting process truly was. Usually in high school, you write the first few facts that come to mind and you have yourself a decent paper – this is not the case in college. After meeting with Mrs. Forgette in conference, I realized that going through draft after draft is actually a good thing, and a vital part to the writing process. Several mandatory components of this guide caused me a great amount of stress, most particularly the writing analysis. In high school, my teachers stressed that we could read a certain story and be able to analyze what the author meant; never did I think of how they wrote. In the few weeks in this writing class I have realized that determining how an article is written and analyzing the rhetoric is what I struggle with the most. Throughout my writing process, I would have all of the “must-haves” except for these. This caused me to take a step back and thoroughly read through my guide and go back to the articles that I had included to try and get a good grasp on where an ideal location would be to insert these analyses. Although I had trouble with a few “must-haves”, some were vary favorable. After I completed the numerous homework activities about searching and selecting different article forms from The New York Times, I actually came to enjoy the differences between a news piece and an op-ed piece on the same subject. After completely disregarding my first draft and settling on four new sections, I can easily say that sifting through article after article deep within The Times was my most enjoyable part of this whole project. My Donald Trump section was the easiest to find different article forms, to no surprise. I knew that I could find the bulk of my “must-haves” with Mr. Trump because of the plethora of information that is circulating about him, but at the same time I knew that my guide would be at its best with the “must-haves” spread throughout. During class Wednesday, I came to fruition that I had written more of a “how to” guide than a writing analysis guide and that I had to start over. I wanted to have the majority of my guide written so that Mrs. Forgette could tell me how everything was coming along and possibly steer me in the right direction, so I knew that I had to act fast. That night, however, was the Presidential Debate which was something that I had been looking forward to for weeks and did not want to miss. At first I thought that attempting to watch the debate and write my guide would be disastrous, but then it hit me that I was writing about all of those people on stage so how could it hurt me. I will admit that I got distracted multiple times throughout the debate, and how could you not with all of those entertaining politicians. If I had just locked myself in my room with my earbuds in, I probably could have finished my entire draft that night with time to spare, but I don’t think that I would have changed a thing. I actually heard things during the debate that caused me to search subjects on The New York Times which I ended up including in my final draft. If I had to give myself any advice for future writing situations, I would tell myself that sometimes it is okay to write crap and go back and try again and again until you finally get it right.