Chapter 1-Getting Started

After reading chapter one from Bedford Researcher, I feel a little bit more prepared for the getting started process of writing a research paper. This chapter begins with explaining how to  research and write with confidence. All it takes is a little bit of personal investment in your writing and understanding your topic. To do these things ask yourself questions about the type of assignment you have been assigned and how it would help with pursuing your future goals. Even if at first the assignment may not interest you, you can still find ways to make it at least somewhat intriguing by relating it to yourself. Understanding the research writing process is also helpful, not knowing what it takes to write a research paper could make it a bit more challenging. "Learning about your topic, taking a position on that topic, and sharing your position with your readers" (Palmquist,4). Those things are what a research paper is all about. Once you understand and work with those, they will help you in accomplishing your paper.

Another important aspect in the getting started stage of writing your paper is making sure that you are organized, and not just with doing things step by step, but with your sources as well. Keeping the sources you have found in one place makes it easier to go back and look at them later. Developing your own strategies to help you manage your time will be a big help throughout your process.

Choosing a topic as always one of the hardest things for me when I get assigned a writing project. The best thing to do is to look at what your teacher has asked of you and what they expect in your paper and go from there. A couple things you can ask yourself are who is reading your paper? what is going to influence my readers? and what type of document am I writing? Brainstorming is one of the best ways to start getting your ideas out. A few different types are free writing, looping, and clustering.

This is only the getting started stage of writing a paper, and I think by knowing these things I will be able to look back at this and use it when writing my paper.