WHY I WRITE
RE-PURPOSING
MANY VOICES | ONE WRITER
Minor in Writing E-Portfolio
RE-MEDIATION
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Thoughts?
Send me an email with comments, questions, ideas, advice, cool music, or funny pictures.
Click here to explore an essay about my experiences and relationship with writing.
Click here to learn about the step-by-step process through which I transformed a previous essay toward a new audience with a new argument.
Click here to listen to a full interview and completed podcast inspired by the re-purposing piece.
In deciding to pursue the Minor in Writing, I was not only seeking to refine skills in communication, but also to discover what kinds of writing I was best at. I wanted to know where my writing was naturally strongest, so I could practice and channel those skills into my future aspirations in marketing and business analytics. I viewed the Minor in Writing as a path to self discovery– should I direct my future toward detailed analytical writing or short creative blurbs?
Contrary to my expectations, upon entering the Gateway course we were encouraged to test our limits. I was challenged to experiment and not continue to practice writing I was familiar with, but step out of my comfort zone to explore new media, mode, and tone. Quickly, I modified my goal for the semester, deciding to frame every new assignment as an opportunity to impliment a new style and voice. In creating the "Why I Write" piece, I was extremely conscious of using language that I thought sounded beautiful. The Re-Purposing paper was written in an intentionally casual and opinionated tone, as one might find in an article from Vice or Slate, which I had never before done in an academic paper. Additionally, it is stylistically multi-dimensional, encompassing links, photos, and other modal strategies. The Re-Mediation project brought on a different set of challenges because I chose to create a podcast, and was presented with new choices like which sound bytes from an interview to use and how to match my inflection with the background music.
What links all of my pieces from the semester is what differs between them– stark differentiation in tone and the trial and error used in their processes. With the help of experimentation, peer coaching, and editing of these projects, I practiced and gained a better sense of how to adopt an appropriate voice while discussing different topics and using a range of media. Moving forward, I understand that there is no one style of writing that fits best with me. To become a better communicator in contexts ranging from academia to music blogs to radio, practice is the only way.
To read more about my writing processes this semester, check out entries in my writing blog.