Writing has always been a powerful and necessary tool for me. From penning personal songs and poems to papers in school I have always viewed concise, eloquent writing as a necessity. It is crucial to have as strong understanding of the fundamental aspects of writing such as format, genre, medium, tone, and point of view in order to successfully articulate your message to an audience. Since about 7th grade I have actively pursued becoming a better writer, improving both my vocabulary and grammatical skills. I firmly believe that if you are equipped with all the tools to be a successful writer, in terms of accomplishing as goal, you need not look for inspiration.

In most types of writing knowing your audience is especially important. Identifying common trends and interests in your target audience can help you create an impactful and effective piece. In addition, having a strong handle on the rhetorical elements of writing can greatly improve the efficacy and strength of your writing, regardless of genre. I don’t start with inspiration every time I write, although when available, it is a welcome addition to my process. Always writing from inspiration is an impossible goal to set. So, in compromise with myself, I have developed a strategy of “just writing”. This basically means I will sit down and write about whatever I need to be writing about. Even if the first page or so is garbage, I will always get on the right track, and in the end have something I can be proud of, or at least happy with. This may sound a bit off the wall but it really words for me regardless of genre. Writing about whatever a given topic helps me gather my thoughts on the assignment and organize the assignment in my head. This year I frequently wrote papers then, halfway through, went back and made formatting changes or edits to my thesis because of a new idea or piece of evidence that I uncovered. This way of writing is very open which I love. It allows me to adapt to the information I am working with. Being an artist, this is the most efficient and logical way for me to work as I thrive when I can be creative and come to my own conclusions. Using planning pages or outlines feels too restrictive and robotic to me, even when writing things such as research papers. I believe writing at its core is the fundamental expression of an author’s stance. This idea can be applied to every genre and medium. Throughout English 110 I learned how to apply the rhetorical elements to more than just my non-fiction work in the class. While learning about things such as audience, tone, and stance I was able to make connections and improve my work in my creative writing class. I was able to draw parallels and see the differences between say, the audience of a script vs. a research paper. In addition, I felt more inspired than ever to write songs and paint pictures of the world I was seeing. I believe this can be attributed to an increase in the frequency at which I was writing. Writing is like a muscle, the more you work it out, the stronger it becomes. This was and is my experience. The more comfortable I became with utilizing rhetoric in my writing, the more I saw how necessary it was to be thorough in creating a strong narrative in my work. Rhetorical devices, I learned, allow us to formulate information in a way which will appeal to our target audience. Although none of the assignments in English 110 were particularly challenging, I am glad that I was able to strengthen my knowledge on rhetorical devices.

    My senior year of high school I took AP English, which to this day stands as the most informative english class I have ever taken. The level of critical analysis I experienced has been unmatched. I felt as if I had a strong handle on all of the concepts we covered throughout this class. The biggest letdown for me was our peer review process. I always arrived to class hoping to receive some type of constructive criticism from my classmates, yet never did. When successful, peer reviews are an excellent source of both inspiration and guidance. I understand how impactful they can be on a writers process, which is why I am a little bit upset that our class reviews never met these standards. The best “peer review” that I received was consistently from my teacher. Most everyone I spoke to in the review process seemed so caught up in the conventions of a paper that they almost forget what they were writing about, thus showing me erratic papers that jumped from fact to fact with no context. Here began my problem with the word “process” in writing. As we discussed it more thoroughly in class it became evident that the vast majority of students could not care less about their writing and that the word “process” had taken on the new meaning of “what makes me write as quickly as possible so I can get this paper over with”.

My theory of writing did not morph as much as I expected it to from the beginning to end of English 110, yet I saw that my idea of writing greatly differed from my classmates. The first two assignments were much like many papers I dealt with in high school, and thus very easy for me to comprehend and complete. The third assignment, “Writing in Two Genres”, was a small step out of my comfort zone but I had also experienced many assignments akin to the genres I chose in my creative writing class. Reflecting on my experience, I wish the class challenged me to really inspect and update my process as a writer, yet none of the assignments were challenging enough to make me reconsider my methods. I believe that formal writing, such as the majority of work in English 110 requires more of a formula than a process to complete. You can be divinely uninspired and still write a research paper if you have a sheet of facts in front of you. I approach every assignment as a blank palate, which may not be the smartest way top right, but it feels most natural to me. A writer’s process comes from them challenging themselves to create a piece of work which they believe has merit and value in whatever field they are writing in. Process is for those who look to advance writing, to show something fresh and new. Process is what allows a writer to create something they feel is important. Not all writing requires a process, some just needs a formula.