Opinion Editorial & Writing Process Reflection

What writing strategies work for you? What didn't?
I found that writing the opinion editorial came fairly easy, as I was writing about a topic that I had been passionate for quite some time. As someone who struggled with negative side-effects from social media, and who ultimately found better ways to use my time, I found that writing to others who also have struggled/are struggling with social media was intriguing. This topic worked for me, and I found that creating my thesis, and thus my entire paper, was a very fluid process. I divided my thesis into three parts illustrating three potential negative effects that social media may have on its users. By doing this, I structured my paper with three specific topics, from which I could research and give more detailed examples. While writing my opinion editorial, I found myself using a lot of logos by referencing credited sources to 1. pinpoint social media addiction as an actual problem and 2. offer background information and support to the points I discussed in each paragraph.
 I found it harder however, and especially for this topic, to write with Pathos -- perhaps I used some techniques to connect emotionally with my audience, however knowing how to do so completely was a bit difficult. I attempted this with my hook sentence and parts of my introduction, but I feel that my paper lacked other examples to connect on a more emotional level with my audience. One writing strategy that I struggled with was being firm in my opinion, and not being so apologetic surrounding my examples. I wanted to present my topic in a realistic way, and show that there are two sides to social media use: one positive, and one negative. However, I realized that to be too two-faced or "wishy-washy" in a persuasive piece can be detrimental to an argument. For this reason, after my rough draft I had to go through and cut out many pieces that would seem to undermine my main argument, or at least make them less stark.
What were your expectations writing the Opinion Editorial?
While writing my opinion editorial, I wanted to really include all three areas of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. However, I found it hard to really include specific examples of each... often, I would find myself including examples subconsciously. My experience with my opinion editorial was an overall positive one. I think my topic had a lot of substance and examples to draw from, and there was probably much more I could have included to make my argument stronger -- however, my keeping my points concise, I feel I could connect with my audience at a better level. Learning to write for an audience was also a crucial part of this paper. By keeping in mind who would be reading my paper, I could tailor my discussions to their personal experiences/needs.
What were techniques/styles/thoughts used in my paper from class lecture/style academy?
One of the techniques I attempted to use from the Style Academy is that of parallelism. I tried to do this throughout my paper, and found that repeating important concepts or ideas helped the persuasion of my argument. Of course I tried to use as much Pathos, Logos, and Ethos and other rhetorical tools as I could -- and this was something we spent a fair amount of time in class discussing. Another important method I used was mimicking the style of other writers (also taught in one of the videos on Style Academy). Many may think this negative, however reading others' works have helped me to develop my own and unique style of writing -- and I definitely looked at some writing pieces before hand to inspire some of my sentence structures. Something I wish to improve with my next paper is making my writing more concise -- something that I struggle with every assignment (as can be seen by the length of this post).