A Writing Story
What is writing?
To some it is an annoying essay about a topic that they hate. To google it is the activity or skill of marking coherent words on paper and composing text. To others to a creative way to express themselves. To me writing is a method of communication that passes a message or prove a point through the use of words. However, writing isn’t just one term there are many subcategories. Writing has many forms and people view it in different ways. There is no one rule set to writing there is so many different types and kinds and subjects people can write about the combinations are endless. Every person whether they know it or not has a process they go through and a wide concept map of intertwining ideas that connect all back to writing. Their process helps them write and complete their ideas for whatever their assignment they want to complete an essay all the way to a simple text message.
Writing Maps:
Some key terms on my writing maps at the beginning are hard because writing has always been my worst subject. I’ve always had this conception that I was only good at math and science and was always bad at writing. I wrote “writing is hard there is no way to get around it. You can find ways to understand it better though to make it easier” but the thought that it will always be hard was still in my mind.
In addition to hard another term of mine was ideas. Ideas are the key part of writing you cannot start and essay, reflection, research paper, email or anything without an idea of what you are going to write about. I wrote “A key concept in writing, If there were no ideas there would be no writing.”
Voice was another terms voice is how you speak in writing, how you express what you are trying to say. I wrote “Voice is how you express yourself whether by pictures or words”.
Picture 1: The first writing concept map
The second writing concept map most important terms begins with discourse community. The discourse community term will be used from the time we did the map until the end of the quarter. Discourse community is “a group of certain like minded people who complete certain tasks”. However now I believe a discourse community is s a group of people who shares a specialized language, own methods of communication, and shared goals to better their community.
Genre is the method you chose to write in. I wrote “a method of communication that has many forms”. Now I believe that genre is still a method but each form has a certain role and function to write in. Examples of genres include emails, text messages, essays, research papers, phone calls. Each of the genres have their own purpose you would express your findings over a phone call it would be a research paper.
Picture 2: The second writing concept map
The third and final writing concept map they key term was reflection. Reflection because if you do not reflect how is someone supposed to get better at writing. I wrote “Reflection is what did you do” in a short way explaining what you did and how you did it and the choices of why you did it.
In addition to reflection Writing method is there. The writing method is different for every assignment and for everyone. People have different methods and processes for every assignment, it may also change from assignment to assignment.
Picture 3: The third writing concept map
These writing maps are my interpretations of the readings we have read in class in Writing about Writing. This book is about specific tactics and ideas from past famous writers about their idea maps. One idea that stuck on me was the CARS method from Swales ideas and his 3 methods. “Establishing a Territory… Making Topics Generalized…Reviewing Previous Items of Research” (Page 22, Writing about Writing, Elisabeth Wardle and Doug Downs). In addition to WAW another video that gave me inspiration was the video about Everything is a Remix. Yes the video is old however it made a great point that ideas come from all over and sometimes you create them and other times you need to remix it take a past idea and change it so it works for the assignment.
How my writing maps changed:
Through the many projects in WRD 103 I can use my skills to show my knowledge but most importantly I changed my writing maps. One example of this is project 3. We had to make a multimodal project on a discourse community we belonged in in which we explained in project 2. I decided to make an IMovie because I wanted to try something new. I had to use words to explain my exigence of why I wanted to make the video in addition to get people to go to the specific discourse community. The major term I changed throughout the maps is Genre, Reflection, and Writing Method. Before completing these projects I didn’t know how to explain what a genre was I thought it was only like fantasy, horror, and non-fiction but it is so much more there is texting, emails, essays, and much more. Reflection is something I have never done before I came to WRD 103 I just turned in my work and it was what it was. Reflections give the writer a second chance to look at their works and find what to fix for the next project and obtain a better understanding of the whole writing process. The writing method I never thought about I didn’t know I write better with country music and relaxing in bed. I usually get one idea and I just start to write but when I do a prewrite I get a lot better first, second, and final drafts. These projects have affected me for the better I understand the whole process and how to write and how to use the terms and write a more effective piece.
Writing Process:
After the maps we looked at writing process. Writing process is the order of things you do to complete an assignment for anything. My writing process is gathering all of my supplies including snacks, drinks, laptop, phone, wallet & keys, chargers, and most importantly finding a comfortable place to do the writing. I usually do 1–3 drafts of an assignment before turning it in to make sure it is the best work. After drafting I always edit again. To me revising and editing to me are basically the same things so I count them at one step. Most of the time I never publish my work I usually turn in my paper.
Picture 4: Writing process
Writing for the future and in class:
Since the beginning of I always hated writing I dreaded it I thought to myself that these assignment were just busy work that needed to get done to just complete the necessary classes for graduation. English, WRD, Language arts I never liked them I started to until I realized that I love science and math. From them I didn’t like reading. However that is changing. I am starting to like the concepts. From WRD 103 and taking classes from them I will use the topics from this class and from what I learned from Writing about Writing to not only write better but understand the concepts and begin to change my views that I can like something that was told I hated. I will use the tactics from this class to work on new genres like Medium and many more like IMovie and digication. I will use them to do projects not only in WRD but all my future classes. Writing will always be here and whether a text or a whole essay writing is there. In conclusion one can see that the more you know the more you can do with writing and its great to explore with new writing methods and learn the concepts that help people write.
