I came into this course with basically no real knowledge or love of writing, but can certainly say that I’ll be leaving the semester with newly found respect and admiration for what is one of the greatest forms of creation and expression that exists. Seeing the science behind what writers do, the reasons they write in certain ways, and the different forms of writing used to reach different audiences with different motivations, was eye opening for me. I’ll never be skilled enough in the art-form to call myself a writer, but going forward in school and life I know that I will read and write with a completely different mindset, as well as better understanding of the tools at a writer’s disposal, the weapons of their arsenals.

I believe that there are many aspects a person must consider when they set out to compose a piece of writing. This class taught me the basics of these aspects in the form of rhetorical devices; (rhetorical)situation, audience, author, tone, purpose, genre, medium, stance, and language. All of these and many more concepts must be correctly used by a writer for something of quality to be produced, but in my opinion the most important elements to focus on are the audience, you as an author, and your purpose. When writing, you must know your audience, the people you will target to read your words, an author absolutely needs to know who they are writing for or risk completely missing the mark. On the other side of that coin you must know who you are as an author, how it affects what you are writing, and how it affects the perception of your work by your audience. For example an African-American from Harlem would be a better fit to write an article on racial inequality than an Italian guy living in Texas who’d make a great Spaghetti Western. Finally, I believe the purpose(s) you have for writing will have the largest impact on whatever it is you’re writing. Are you writing to inform? To persuade? To attack? To defend? Whatever your purpose is, more than anything else, it will determine the vast majority of conscious and unconscious decisions made when writing.

My “writing process” is atrocious. So bad that i don’t know if it can even be classified as a process. Picture me sitting in front of a blank page for literally hours on end, with nothing after to show for it. When I finally am able to get something out of my head and on the screen I then almost always reread, revise, and scrutinize the words, over and over and over again. This has and always will be the case for me when it comes to writing, but over the semester I feel that my skills as a writer and my understanding of the craft have grown exponentially. I now know many of the ways authors think when they are writing, the devices and techniques they use in their own work and it has helped me shape my thoughts and get them onto the paper. An added benefit that came from this class was the increase of my personal reading from 0 pages a year to 5,402 pages of Stephen King books since the semester started!