Theory of Writing

At the beginning of this semester, I described writing as either cathartic (the work I do in my journal), or academic (the work seen by my teachers in the past of my academic career). This semester, I hoped to blur the lines between the two and I am proud to say that I think I have succeeded. I would now describe writing as any composition of words, in any lens of my life, from thank you cards to an art project.

My Writing 111 class helped me to refine some of my skills and prepare myself for these next three years of college essays. One of my biggest takeaways from this course was that writing is not always in essay form, but it still should be thought of as such, a composition with intention. For example, in my genre remix project, I had to write captions for each of the steps in my manual. In previous courses, whenever I would create what I now recognize as smaller pieces of writing, I would not regard them with the respect or care that I do more traditional essays. In this class however, I was taught to imbed each of these few words with voice and purpose. I had to make sure that each blurb sounded like Ferris Bueller and also conveyed the meaning of the film. Even the tabs that extended from parts of the image for clarification had to be meaningful. Recognizing them as writing helped me ask the questions: What would Ferris clarify? What can a general audience infer? etc.

Additionally, I can now recognize that writing can be approached without an academic tone. My blog posts this semester were writing that was casual and fun, but was still in an academic context. This casual practice drastically increased the pace with which I write. My first blog posts took me at least two hours or so to complete while now posts take me less than an hour on average (if I can manage to sit down and focus for that long). I think one of the reasons my writing got faster is because I was able to let go of some of the unnatural tone of a purely academic paper and be more confident in the way my own voice wanted to craft the message.

The last takeaway that I had from this course was defienitely a benefit that only students of Writing 111 with a Topic of Rhetoric in Pop Culture reaps, that rhetoric can be found in anything. This course helped to reframe what rhetoric means to me. Where before I was solely looking for rhetoric in classically regarded intentional writing, I now see that any one who picks up a pen, or keyboard, is making choices (whether subconscious or purposeful) that influence the way their writing is read.

I came into this class as a strong writer, but this course has helped me broaden my horizons and apply my writing skills to so many new realms of work. Additionally, it has helped me by reminding me to use my reading skills when reading or consuming realms of composition I wouldn't consider rhetorically significant previously. I feel more confident in research as well from the practice I received when working on my Inquiry Project. Overall, I feel more prepared to tackle writing for my remaining three years of college, and I know I can put my best foot forward in all future writing compositions.