Writing Alone vs Collaborative Writing

 I had never really dealt with blogs before this project and so I didn't know how much it had to offer. Writing the story on a blog was a new experience and it made me want to see what else you can do on a blog. I liked that others could have access to what you wrote and were able to add to it and comment on it.  I've used other websites where you could create posters on the website but they weren't as interactive. This is somewhat similar but others can comment on what you post.
 Digital mediums are different because it makes your ideas more accessible and easy to share or edit. With an online medium, you write more because you can type a lot faster than you write. You know you can go back and take out what you don't want in the end if you decide that you don't like what you had written. When you edit your work on paper, you can see where it was changed so online mediums are a lot neater and easier to correct. Googles interface was hard to use at first but then it was easy to use once I got the hang of it, but at first I had to ask others to show me what to do. 
As a group we created a page that was a collaboration of all of our ideas. If I had written it alone then I probably wouldn't have taken as much time to write the story because working with others made me think about what we were writing and how we could make it better while we were writing it. On my own I probably wouldn't go back and edit it much. It was easier to catch errors with so many people reading it.
 Writing the analytical paper is different because you don't have someone else to talk with about how you can improve your paper or other ways of wording sentences to make your point come across clearer. I wrote my analytical paper once through and then went back to rearrange parts but in the digital story you couldn't do that because we were responsible for one page and it had to be written from the details other people gave. You don't have as much freedom when writing in a group. In creative writing and research papers, you have the freedom to write about any topic of your choice but in research papers, you need outside sources to back up your claims. The target reader for the page was the other students in the class and so the story could have details geared towards this age level. Our page and story was about something we all could find interest in. I don't think only one story we read influenced us. Our story was influenced by different aspects of each story.

Writing Differences original

Research papers and creative writing are at two complete ends of the writing spectrum. Their purposes are completely different; and they are structured very differently. I will analyze these differences in the following text, breaking down multiple aspects of each.  

                Research papers are meant to study and analyze a topic. They are generally written in paragraph form, started with a central argument or thesis, and use the following paragraphs to strengthen their original statements. Research papers are generally written for school or work, and are meant to be very informative but lean in creativity and entertainment factor. They are usually written for a very specific audience and are tailored to apply to that group. They are made to get their point across and do not much more beyond that. Because of this, research papers can be very dry to read and very boring to right. They need to be accurate and often need multiple citations for any information used to comprise them. However, compared to creative writing, research papers can be easier to do quickly since they are fairly straight forward.

                Creative writing is much more wide open. Its form, purpose, and style can all differ dramatically from one work to another. Creative writing can be used to tell stories, to get a point across in an indirect way, or even as a form of art. It contains a wide variety of topics and genres as well, including romance, action, thrillers, sports, and just about anything else.  Creative writing is generally more entertaining and deep then formal writing, and usually appeals to a wider audience. Most people read creative writing in their leisure and it appeals to readers of all ages.

                In my personal experiences with both, I have generally enjoyed creative writing more. While research papers can be easier to form and sometimes quicker to write, I enjoy being able to improvise within my writing and go into any direction in which I please. I had fun with the creative writing project that we did in groups earlier in the year for this reason. I think it can be fun to start writing and see where you end up after a while.

                In conclusion, research papers and creative writing are different for a number of ways. Comparing the two show how dynamic writing can be and how writing is used for completely different purposes.

Writing Differences

When looking at my experiences with the digital medium, I prefer my personal experiences to the ones in this class. Before this class, my involvement with the digital medium was in Tumblr, a pseudo-blog website, and my personal blog. Tumblr’s appearance shows mostly pictures, usually with captions of no more than 1-2 sentences, and some solo original text of one paragraph or so in length. These posts come from people you “follow.” Tumblr works as a unique way to express thoughts, opinions, or emotions very succinctly. Most of these posts are of fleeting thoughts or are used as a way to vent to an audience who chooses to be a part of your audience. This is different than the way we used the digital medium in class. Our assignment, the digital story, was a work of fiction; Tumblr consists of posts that are usually nonfiction. Our digital story required details that were necessary to the reader, while Tumblr posts rarely consider it necessary to explain everything, as the author is not writing to help the audience understand. Posts on our class story were related to one another and we could build on the work of our peers. This is similar to Tumblr because people have the option to add to or comment on posts by others and they often do.

My other experience in the digital medium is a personal blog. My posts are usually multiple paragraphs and sometimes one topic will extend over multiple posts. The writing is usually very extensive, even if a topic does not require extensiveness, and is in some kind of essay format. It does not have much of a theme; instead I write on whatever topics interest me on a given day. The posts are all nonfiction but they may be written about something that is fiction, such as a novel that sparked an idea. This experience has some similarities to the writing we did in this class, such as the detail that both go into. In class, the writing required lots of detail and the same applies to blog posts. However, the writing in class had a plot of sorts and told a story; my posts do not tell a story, but rather explain thoughts or ideas of mine. The digital story integrated outside sources into the story and used sources to write it. I do not use links or other ways of integrating sources unless directly referencing the idea I am writing about.

Tumblr and my personal blog are my preferred styles in the digital medium. The digital story, while interesting to write, was not as fun to write. I personally like reading fiction but not so much writing it. Tumblr, unlike a blog, requires little cognitive effort to engage in because thoughts are very short and to the point. My blog is a place I write when I have a lot to say and am in a thinking mood. A digital story like the one in class has integrated pieces that are much more, in my opinion, difficult to work with, when reading and writing it. I prefer the experiences I had outside of this class.

Blogging Versus Storytelling

When looking at my experiences with the digital medium, I prefer my personal experiences to the ones in this class. Before this class, my involvement with the digital medium was in Tumblr, a pseudo-blog website, and my personal blog. Tumblr’s appearance shows mostly pictures, usually with captions of no more than 1-2 sentences, and some solo original text of one paragraph or so in length. These posts come from people you “follow.” Tumblr works as a unique way to express thoughts, opinions, or emotions very succinctly. Most of these posts are of fleeting thoughts or are used as a way to vent to an audience who chooses to be a part of your audience. This is different than the way we used the digital medium in class. Our assignment, the digital story, was a work of fiction; Tumblr consists of posts that are usually nonfiction. Our digital story required details that were necessary to the reader, while Tumblr posts rarely consider it necessary to explain everything, as the author is not writing to help the audience understand. Posts on our class story were related to one another and we could build on the work of our peers. This is similar to Tumblr because people have the option to add to or comment on posts by others and they often do.

            My other experience in the digital medium is a personal blog. My posts are usually multiple paragraphs and sometimes one topic will extend over multiple posts. The writing is usually very extensive, even if a topic does not require extensiveness, and is in some kind of essay format. It does not have much of a theme; instead I write on whatever topics interest me on a given day. The posts are all nonfiction but they may be written about something that is fiction, such as a novel that sparked an idea. This experience has some similarities to the writing we did in this class, such as the detail that both go into. In class, the writing required lots of detail and the same applies to blog posts. However, the writing in class had a plot of sorts and told a story; my posts do not tell a story, but rather explain thoughts or ideas of mine. The digital story integrated outside sources into the story and used sources to write it. I do not use links or other ways of integrating sources unless directly referencing the idea I am writing about.

            Tumblr and my personal blog are my preferred styles in the digital medium. The digital story, while interesting to write, was not as fun to write. I personally like reading fiction but not so much writing it. Tumblr, unlike a blog, requires little cognitive effort to engage in because thoughts are very short and to the point. My blog is a place I write when I have a lot to say and am in a thinking mood. A digital story like the one in class has integrated pieces that are much more, in my opinion, difficult to work with, when reading and writing it. I prefer the experiences I had outside of this class.

The Two Hardest Writing Disciplines

                Over the course of my education, I have written all sorts of essays, including argumentative, cause and effect, narrative, expository, and persuasive essays.  However, it seemed that creative writing projects and research papers were the most popular pieces among my elementary, high school, and college professors.  While my teachers tended to enjoy assigning creative writing assignments and research papers, students, along with myself, felt the opposite.  Students dread writing, especially when writing research papers and completing creative writing assignments, mainly because they are the most difficult out of the many writing disciplines.

               The term “creative writing” basically speaks for itself.  It is a type of writing that is creative, meaning the writer must solely use his or her imagination, which makes creative writing a challenging task.  Some students are wildly creative, while other students don’t have an imaginative bone in their body.  The formal definition for creative writing is “any writing, fiction or non-fiction that goes outside the bounds of normal, professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature’.  Some examples of creative writing include novels, epic poetry, short stories, and poems.  Screenwriting and playwriting also fall under the category of creative writing.

If I were to define creative writing in my own words, I would describe it as writing from the heart.  Creative writing doesn’t rely on scholarly information or any factual information for that matter.  It only relies on one thing; and that one thing is your brain, which is why creative writing can be so difficult for certain people.  Some people are not born with a creative mind and as a result, they struggle with these types of assignments.  Creative writing also entails expressing one’s own thoughts, feelings, and emotions, which is another thing that people struggle to do.  An excellent example of a creating writing project would be the digital storytelling project that we had to complete for this class.  A group of students were required to get together to create a story of their own.  I was part of the first group to produce a page for the digital storytelling project and I personally found it hard to devise up a story that the remaining groups in the class had to feed off of.  I like to think of myself as creative, but unfortunately, the imaginative thoughts are sometimes not there.

 

           Research papers are completely different than creative writing projects.  A professional definition of a research paper is “a type of academic writing that presents one’s own interpretation or evaluation or argument, with the help of research, scholarly journals, or existing reviews”.  Research papers are challenging to write due to the fact that research papers require you to search and find information outside of your own personal thoughts and insights. 

An obvious example of a research project would be the final analytical research paper that we are required to write for the end of the semester.  We were able to pick a topic of our choosing and had to devise up an argument of our own and support it with scholarly information.  I personally dislike writing research papers and I find them difficult to write, due to the time it takes to write them.  I know that the majority of my fellow peers would agree with me when I say that research papers are a hassle and are a pain to write.

 

            The main point of my argument is that students dislike the art of writing, primarily research and creative writing papers mainly because they require you to express your own thoughts, use your own imagination, and support your arguments using outside research.

Writing With Something In Mind

           English is probably one of my least favorite subjects. Nothing against English professors or teachers, it's just that I don't enjoy sitting down and writing analytically on a novel. I love to read. That being said, I love reading when I don't have to be constantly keeping track of diction, symbols, syntax, themes, etc. When analysis comes into play; is when a book is no longer enjoyable to me. Novels were written as learning tools as well. Every story has some sort of message or messages to be learned from it. And in English 1101.01 one of our jobs for the research paper was to find a story and analyze the story and its meaning using other sources to back-up our claim. While writing this paper and doing other assignments in the class, I learned things that I will always keep in mind. I learned that when writing the reader should always be kept in mind no matter if the writing is creative or analytical.

Analytical and creative writing have their similarities and their differences. Most importantly, both forms of writing want the reader to stay engaged throughout the whole paper. In analytical papers it’s a lot harder to do that than in creative writing. In analytical papers you have to put all the facts out there for the readers. Leaving them guessing is the sign of a bad analysis paper. On the other hand, creative writing is all about making the reader guess and come to his/her own conclusions. That’s how you keep the reader engaged. My experience with creative writing was small but enjoyable. It’s not often that you get to use your imagination to make something come to life in words. Rhetoric is the last piece to the puzzle for both types of writing. It’s what keeps people reading. (If you are not engaged at this point I’m quite sorry I have not done a good job, but you’re over halfway done so why not keep reading right?)

Rhetoric is all about keeping the readers feelings in mind while writing. You want readers to be able to sympathize with you while reading. In the beginning of this blog I started off by saying, “English is probably one of my least favorite subjects,” right off the bat I am getting those who don’t like English or are more favored to a different subject to be more willing to hear what I have to say. Hopefully, some people are agreeing with what I’m saying by now or else I haven’t learned nearly as much in this class as I thought.

The rhetoric in the creative writing assignment was all about first person views. By narrating in first person, the reader felt more engaged as if it were the reader experiencing the story first hand. The sensory details, vivid scenery description, and thoughts all make the first person point of view come to life. It’s the words that mean the most for rhetoric. In the assignment choosing words that made the view feel first person was the most important part. For analytical papers, the rhetoric is all about having the reader relate to your argument. You want to make the argument feel as if your argument is the right one without forcing it down their throat.

Writing is not easy to do and knowing if something is going to relate with others before being published isn't easy either. Hopefully some of you can relate with the beginning parts and feel that the reader is always one of the main thoughts a writer should have on his mind. If not I would love to hear how I can improve. I believe I learned a lot from English 1110.01 but I know that there is still more to learn. 

The Freedom of Fictional Writing

            My experience of writing the page for the digital story project was much different than the approach I took when writing my analytical research paper. I didn’t really know what to expect for the digital story because it was a fictional piece in which the group could have taken in many different directions. For my analytical research paper, I knew exactly what I was going to write about from the beginning. There were specific guidelines given to us that I had to follow. There wasn’t really much room for creativeness during the analytical research paper. With four brains working on a fictional piece, there is a lot more freedom for the writers in comparison to one brain working on a research paper.

When approaching the analytical research paper, I knew I was going to have follow specific guidelines given by the professor. We were given a theme that our paper had to follow and points that we had to bring up in our papers. This was much different than the digital story experience. There weren’t really any guidelines we had to follow. We basically got to choose what happened next in the story. Our only limitation in the digital story project was following the characters and setting the previous groups had set in the pages prior to our group’s page. Other than that, we had the opportunity to be creative and completely decide what happened in the fictional story. The only freedoms we had in the analytical research paper was the primary source and the topic that was going to be explored in the paper. We had to have a primary source, at least two secondary sources, and a thesis that was backed up with evidence from those sources.

Another difference in approaching the two pieces of writing was the number of people working on it. For the analytical research paper, I knew I was only going to use my own ideas. I wasn’t really going to have anyone else’s input, other than when people edited my paper. Everything written in the analytical research paper came from my own thoughts or from the thoughts of the authors of the sources I used in the paper. With the digital story project on the other hand, the thoughts and ideas in that piece were from about 24 different people. More specifically, when writing my page of the story, there were ideas of four people. Going into the project, I knew my ideas weren’t going to be the only ones shared in the story. The four of us came up with our own ideas, shared them with the group, and we worked together to decide which ideas were going to be incorporated into the digital story. This allowed the digital story to be even more creative than if it were only one person writing the entire story.

                In analytical research papers, the writer is limited to what he or she writes based on the guidelines given. In a fictional piece, like the digital story, there really is no limitation to what the story is about. There is more freedom and creativity for the writer in digital story than when writing an analytical research paper with a theme already given.