Blog 21 (Writing Review)

I honestly don't really think of myself as a writer. I guess I would say as an intermediate writer. My writing mechanics leaves something to be desired and there is still a lot I need to learn to ever become advanced at writing. I can form sentences so I would say I am not a beginner.

I never considered the different types of writing there were. I knew the basic categories of essays like informative, persuasive etc... I never thought about the fact that these were not the only types. I didn't care as long as I wrote the essay right and got a good grade. I never really thought about what an essay is. In this class I had to think about what an essay is, how to meld form and content, and what an autobiography consists of. So I guess I am more aware of what I am writing.

I realized that I don't really plan out what I am going to write. I just sit down and write. After I am done writing then I edit and alter my writing. I think I learned to plan out what I am writing to a certain extent in order to organize my paper better. I don’t plan what I am writing paragraph for paragraph, but I make a skeleton of the paper.

Before this class I usually did not have my peer’s edit my paper. I just assumed have the teacher edit it. In this class, however, with every writing project we had to peer review our papers for points. This helped because it gave me more input than just the teacher’s thoughts on what I needed to fix. I like having my teacher look over any paper I am turning in to them because then they can give me their input on my paper and I know what they are expecting me to fix in order to do better.

I don’t know if I can give an exact definition of good writing, because the rules change from essay to essay. There isn’t a concrete set of guidelines. I would say that for me good writing adheres to writing mechanics rules, (depending upon the type of writing) it gives the authors opinion and insights along with the data of the subject. A good writer’s paper is organized and the thesis ties the whole paper together. The paper is not scattered or rambling there is a purpose to what is written.

I am still trying to figure out how to meld form and content in writing. In "Blog 6" we were supposed to meld form and content and I don’t think I did a good job of it. I think this is something that I definitely need to work on. I also need to work on my Rhetoric Appeals essays. I don’t always see the connections between a piece and all its rhetoric appeals. The main problem I have with rhetoric appeals is that I usually only saw one or two appeals instead of all three like I was supposed to. This is part of the reason that I only discussed on rhetoric appeal mainly in my "Rhetoric Appeals Paper". I am good at observing things. I kind of enjoyed the "Observation and Reflection essay", because I like just writing about what I think and how that deals with what I observed.