MEAL Planning

I was at first a little stuck when attempting the meal plan. I understand the concept, but dissecting a paper that I wrote years ago slowed me down because I had to relearn what I was previously discussing. I think that at the time I wrote the paper I revised, I was a better writer than I am now. The paper that I chose to revise was a paper that I wrote for a writing class in my undergraduate program. At the time, I was writing frequently for classes as well as writing essays for nursing school applications. Since I graduated and have been working as a nurse, I have avoided writing as much as possible. This realization is a great reminder that to be a good writer and to be comfortable with writing, I simply have to keep writing.

I started the revision process by finding a paragraph and identifying the different parts of the MEAL plan. I realized that I actually had already used the MEAL plan when I wrote the paper originally. Because I had already used the meal plan, and I had all the correct pieces of the formula in the right areas, I continued the revision process using some of the concepts from William Zinsser’s book, On Writing Well, such as cutting out clutter and proper word usage.

I found that just by using Zinsser’s concepts my paper became much more clear. It was easy to see the improvement because I was reading about a topic I was no longer versed in. At the time, I was an expert on my paper topic because I was the one who did all the research. I realized that as an outsider who is just reading one paper, it’s important to make the writing very clear, or else the ready gets lost and becomes disinterested. It’s our goal as a writer to convey information and to make the reader interested in learning more. I can’t accomplish that goal if my writing is not clear or easy to read. I think that the MEAL plan and the concepts that Zinsser addresses are excellent tools to improve my writing and communicate my message to the reader.