This is Who I Am as a Writer
- I am insecure as a writer; I rarely believe my writing is good enough to interest real world readers.
- I am a re-visioner
- I am a social writer; I need to talk it out
- I am a writing procrastinator; because starting a piece of writing is the hardest part for me, I put it off. Once I have started writing, I usually hit the writer’s high and writing becomes easier. Also, the more often I write, the easier it feels.
- My biggest struggle as a creative writer is currently with character development
- My writing – whether academic or creative – is always personal. This may be because I attach the word “writer” to my identity. As such, I feel a little offended when others try to change my writing - for better or worse.
- I write what I know; my characters echo my personality or the personalities of those to whom I am closest emotionally.
- When writing creatively, I include a lot of descriptive imagery. My writing contains a high level of vocabulary. This may occur because I started my writing development as a poet. My creative writing also usually contains serious subject matters to which most people could emotionally relate and can, as a result, be moved by my writing. (Madison says that, as a writer, I’m not a pop song, I’m a symphony.)
- I use writing as therapy. I use it to understand myself, my experiences and the world around me.
This I believe about Writing
- Writing is hard
- Writing is riffing
- Writing requires revision
- Writing requires vision/goals/attempts/failures/mistakes
- Writing means taking risks
- Writing means being honest
- Writing means admitting you need to revise/rewrite in the direction you'd been fighting
- Writing requires collaboration at some point in the process.
- Writing requires deciding when to end
- Writing is always for an audience and for a purpose
- Writing requires mentor texts, so reading is essential. To become a proficient writer in a given context, the writer needs to have several opportunities over a sustained amount of time to write and read in that context. In addition, the writer needs to be able to analyze, reflect and discuss the strategies, techniques, structure, etc. of works in the context.
- Everyone’s writing process is different. Even a single person’s process will change for different contexts and over the course of one’s growth as a writer.
- Writing is multi-voiced. These voices include all the voices of the different identities in a writer as well as those who have influenced the person as a writer (authors, teachers, literacy sponsors).
- Writing goes beyond mechanical rules. As a writer is immersed in a writing context and becomes an “expert” in that context, he/she is given more license by readers to defy the readers’ expectations.
- Writing is about choices. All these choices have rhetorical consequences.
- Challenging oneself to write outside of one’s comfort zone, making mistakes and being willing to wobble are necessary for growth as a writer.
- Writing is not confined to the classroom, to books or to works typically defined as creative. Writing can be text messages, social media texts, graffiti, shopping lists and so on.
- Writing is contextual; therefore, it is impossible to give a single general definition of what writing is.
- Writing is about meaning making
- Writing is about generating ideas
- Writing is about exploration, inquiry and learning.
- Writing is messy
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