How I Grew my Writing Skills Effortlessly
What is my theory of Writing?
My newfound theory of Writing is being able to get your message across clearly, so that it’s easily understood by all.
Throughout the course of the quarter my theory of writing changed dramatically. I have a better understanding of what writing is and what it means. After the 10 weeks of growth and learning experiences, I have a new vision of what my theory is when it comes to writing.
I look at writing with a new and improved eye than I did previously. I have grasped key terms that helped me develop my new understanding of writing. Some of them include: genre, audience, reflection, thoughts/ideas, and editing. I knew about all of my key terms before the class, but I never actually sat down and thought about what each of them means and their purpose in writing. I had a better understanding of these key terms throughout each of the projects I did in WRD 103.
Whenever you are writing some form of a paper whether it’s an academic essay or a press release, it has to start from somewhere. It almost always comes from ones thoughts or ideas of where to head towards with a piece of writing. The first thing I always do when I have to write a paper is put down all my ideas in a rough draft, so I have a ballpark of where I want to gear towards with that piece of writing. It helps me organize my thoughts to have an effective and memorable paper. During the editing process, I always think of my audience and how to most effectively convey my message for others to clearly understand. It’s extremely important that others who may not have taken this class or have their own theory of writing understand what I’m trying to get across with my message.
My key terms of editing and audience tie in together for that reason. The editing is not only to hone in and sharpen my ideas, it’s to have a clear path of my message and if it’s easy to get across. The reflection is a great way to better your skills as a writer. It allows you to go back to your past writing pieces and see what skills you can improv on for next time. I’ve never done a reflection for any papers before this class, and it has seriously helped me reflect on the current I was doing, what went well for me and ways I can do better for the next task.
Lastly, the use of genre! No matter what form of writing we are doing, it’s a genre. Every key term I have discussed tie into the use of genre. Whenever I’m writing a piece, my first thought is what genre would work best for my current writing situation. How can I best display this information and in what form? The end goal is to have my purpose of my writing clearly understood and easy to read.
Before taking WRD 103, I thought writing was solely based off of a specific rubric and set of “rules” that you had to follow. I was told writing had to be grammatically correct. In high school, it was clear that my teachers cared more about where I put my commas rather than the ideas I laid out on the page. I cared more about my grammar than my ideas because I did not want to be marked “wrong”. I was stuck in this world that writing had to be done a correct way, and if it is not, my writing is bad or I do not know how to write well. Coming into college, I thought it would be just like high school, with a ton of red marks, but even harder. Clearly, I was wrong.
In Writing about Writing, they explained that Writing is communicating with each other. I believe that to be true. Writing is communicating to one another. Whether it is from an author to the reader or friends communicating through text. It’s about communicating your thoughts in an effective way that can be easily understood by all.
College cares more about the ideas you put on a page and the message behind the paper than putting a period in replacement of a comma. I have a better understanding that writing is about telling a story, your story, and the meaning and purpose behind it. One of the first activities we did in class was creating a writing map. My first map is vastly different than the last map I made just a week ago.
As you can see in my first writing map on the white paper, I only thought of concepts that I thought writing should entail. I never thought of what goes into the writing process, only things it should have. Really, I only thought of adjectives. For example, one of my words was creative, so my thought process was that writing should be true to you and your level of creativity. In my third map, you see a big shift in my key terms when it comes to writing. You see more words that exemplify the writing process. I put things I do when I’m in the middle of writing a paper. My theory of writing changed by having a clearer understanding of what the purpose of writing is. All of the reflections contributed with that because it helped me grow as a writer and
What contributed to my theory of writing the most are all the reading responses we did throughout the quarter. It really helped me dig deeper and ween in on what writing means. The reading response that stood out to me was the first one we did. It showed that in a matter of 30 minutes, my idea of writing completely changed based on only a few pages I read from “Writing About Writing”. A quote that stood out to me from my Reading Response was: I do want to switch my term smart with the word understanding. The reason for that is you do not have to be the best writer to be able to get your point across. I also want to add some terms. I would like to add concept, ideas, thoughts, feelings, expressive and construction to my list. I do not know why I did not think of adding these words before, but I am glad I am doing it now. I added these words because I believe it identifies what writing is supposed to be. Writing is intended to be your ideas on a certain topic and how you would express your voice in a certain situation.
This change in such a short amount of time impressed me immensely because it happened in less than an hour over one homework assignment. It is amazing to see how much this class has taught me about what writing is and think deeper into interactions that happen all around me that connects to what we are learning in this class. I was able to grasp new concepts and understand there is a lot more to writing than I originally thought. It’s about communicating with each other and understanding what they are trying to say rather than having to be “smart” and make sure all the commas are in the right place. I realized that writing is about the argument you make when giving your point of view. Writing is not all about facts, but more on opinions given a certain topic. It’s about expressing your ideas and feelings thoroughly in your writing. My theory of writing changed throughout the course of the 10 weeks by having a clearer understanding of what the purpose of writing is. All of the reflections contributed with that because it helped me grow as a writer and see the areas I can improve on. It helped me better understand what the purpose was for that specific piece I wrote and why I wrote it.
I have changed my writing practices to be in relation with my theory of writing. I have a much more solid idea and formal understanding on writing, and I try to let my writing integrate my new understanding. What has helped with that are all the drafting and editing I’ve been doing for each of the projects I’ve completed in this course. It especially helped with my Project 3 email newsletter. In the first draft, you can clearly see how crazy long it is, and I didn’t stop to realize who my intended was. I knew who I was writing for, I just didn’t know how to effectively convey the information I wanted for that specific audience group. Throughout my drafts and edits, I realized what parts were the most important and what was the most appealing towards my intended audience. I realized what they wanted to hear about my discourse community.
It’s helped me to better interpret my thoughts from what my newfound theory of writing is. It has put me in other peoples shoes and try to make sense of the purpose of my writing. It helped me to have a clearer understanding of the point I was trying to get across.
My goal is to eventually work at a Broadway Press Agency, Public Relations but for Broadway. I know going into the career world, I will be able to use the skills I’ve developed in this class to help me be successful throughout my writing career. My theory of writing will be transferred to other aspects of my life, especially in the job world. Each piece of writing I do will always be different, thus they have a different genre. The reading response that helped me better understand the use of genre is the fourth one we did. I learned that genre is a type of writing developed from the needs of a recurring situation. In the 4th reading response, I stated that Writing about Writing define genre to be “typified rhetorical actions in response to recurrent situations or situation-types”(18). After reading the assigned texts, I do believe this to be true. Genre is a form of communication that is displayed through text. It is used in a multitude of situations, and is formed differently for each situation. You have to keep in mind where you are and how you want to showcase the “genre” in a certain situation for it to be best understood and used appropriately.
There are many different type of genres for each writing practice. For my situation, I have to think about what writing I’ll be doing, press releases, blogs, etc, and how to most effectively convey that to my audience. I can use what I’ve learned and figure out who my audience is, what I’m writing for, and how formal it should be. That helps me with figuring out how to convey my message in the appropriate way for each situation. Even if I don’t know the specific genre to write in, I can use my theory of writing to help communicate what I want to say so that it can be easily read and understood.
Overall, I have a new and much deeper understanding of writing. I will use my new theory of writing to help communicate better to my audience. All of the activities I learned in WRD 103 has served me greatly, and I will take that to my advantage when I go further in my writing career.
