Writing about Writing

Thanks for a great first day!  I didn't spend as much time learning your names as I meant to - so I will have to catch up on Thursday.

We spent today setting up the class.  I talked through the readings and major assignments, and directed you to the syllabus for the course policies.  The syllabus represents our agreement for how we will work through the course together.  If, as you read through, you think of questions or concerns - let me know and we will talk them through.

You then did some writing about  times in your lives when writing was important to you.  You came up with the following list:

• Business self representation
• Relationship building
• Song writing = metaphoric representation of self
• Interpretations of others’ ideas
• Creative writing (family + personal significance)
• Journaling/autobiography
• Documentation (professional)
• Political activism
• Planning – containing craziness
• Representation of self

We sort of ran out of time - but the plan was to take a look at how you used writing - and what it "did" for you - and then to think about the features of writing that allowed it to work for you the way it did.

In the very short time we had to talk about this - you pointed out that writing helped you build confidence, be creative and provide information.  You also noted that it was therapeutic.    We then noted what some of the particular features of writing were that allowed you to "use" it for these ends.   Some of these features were that writing: 1) creates distance between the writer and his/her feelings or thoughts by putting thoughts outside -on the page - where they can be examined, rearranged, and re-combined.  2) It waits -  it is "still" - and "permanent" so that you can come back to it - and while your feelings and interpretations may change, the while the interpretation or understanding of what they say can change = the marks on the page will be the same when you come back.  This contributes both to its importance as documentation =recording "what happened" at a partricular point in time.  There were some more ideas on our list - and what is remarkable is that the "important experiences" you noted were evidence for features of writing that linguists and other language researchers have observed as characteristics of writing.

Our little experiment is along the lines of what we will be doing in this course (well, sort of).  You will read essays about writing - and then reflect on and apply what you have learned,  You will then analyze your own writing and your relationships to writing conventions and communities = and use what you discover to re-think who you are (want to be) as a writer.  Sorry for running out of time at the end - it would have been better if we had more time to talk through what your experiences suggest about writing - I was pretty interested in your interpretations of what we were finding.


For next class:

Read: Introduction to WAW, pp 1-8, Introduction to Chapter I, pp 34-36

Bring your books and we will talk through some of the vocabulary + the way the book is organized.  You will also do some more writing + reflecting, and get set up to read Grant-Davie's research essay.  Great class and see you on Thursday.