I survived my sickness guys! Cursed myself two weeks ago to be sick last week. Hope last class went well, but now we get two great presentations in one day!! Yipee!
Anyways. Back to how I normally do blogs.
“If You’re Struggling to Write, Lead with Voice” is up first
“I always thought I should sound different: smarter, more complex, more restrained.” I get like this sometimes. Whenever I hear “write in your voice” I don’t struggle, I do whatever I want. But I do try to sound different for academic writing. Not too different, it still is me. Still gonna be a yap. But I would never do “gonna”, “yap”, “yall”, or my usual way of using “like” before going into an example or further explain my past statement. Like what I did with this sentence. Academic is my voice still but way more professional. I have wondered about sounding “smarter” or “more complex” for my creative writing, which might be why I hate having to write poetry. I don’t write like that. Can’t be something I am not, and I certainly am not someone who writes all serious. I like fun and whimsy, and I will choose that every chance I get. But there is always pressure to be “better”, “smarter”, and “more complex” when making work that gets shown to others. You don’t want to be embarrassed by your peers thinking that, somehow, your writing vocab amounts to your smartness. It don’t, but that is what we believe.
“The idea of one “authentic voice” also doesn’t make sense to me in terms of a writer’s process and life. If a writer happens upon that so-called authentic voice, does that mean the previous voices were false or impostors?” I disagree with this in the sense that I would argue my blog posts are my authentic voice but my academic writing isn’t. It isn’t false, or an imposter, more that it is a forced voice. I wouldn’t have that writing style or that voice if it wasn’t expected of me. If I had the choice, I would write like this blog academically. I think it is fun. I have a great time explaining things like this, I enjoy it. It is way more my authentic voice than my research papers. Not saying my academic self is false or an imposter in any way, it just isn’t as me as me could be. It is a version of me, but it isn’t one I would use if I had a choice. I feel like I am talking in a circle but also that I didn’t explain this well, so. Hope you got what I mean but I am gonna move on.
“Bakhtin also believed in and wrote a lot about the fact that a piece of writing could have “many voices” even when written by a single author; he coined the term heteroglossia to describe this phenomenon.” I feel like this is a no duh moment, but I could be wrong. In academic writing, you have to use quotes, thus there are other voices. Even here, I am using quotes, other voices.
When telling a story, you usually have other voices.
For example:
My family watched Toy Story 5 this weekend. There was a scene where Duke Caboom and Bo Peep leave Woody to help the toys at Bonnie’s.
Bo Peep goes, “Girls night!” while leaving with Duke Caboom.
Angel commented, “Hey, it is like Boys Lunch!” (Something I do weekly with my friends Anne and Virgil).
That was more quotes as other voices, but you can also have characters have internal thoughts and then their speaking lines be in different styles. Many ways to have different voices in writing. You could also try to copy other people’s styles or paraphrase their ideas. So many ways to have more than one voice, it is kinda a no duh for me.
The ads on this page keep moving the words around and it is bothering me. I hate when the words on my screen be moving without my say.
Anyway, “I named that voice Pain Woman.” Interesting. I never considered our different voices having a name. I mean it makes some sense, you have different identities you can give those different identities different names. But, I feel like the different parts of me are all so similar I don’t really have a need to name them something different. I also find it interesting that the pain gets a whole voice and name. I mean we all have periods of time with different emotion. Usually I think of those periods by the event that happened. Cause we feel emotions all the time, it is easier to think of the event and then remember the feelings felt during that time period. But I guess if you feel pain for the rest of your life you would get a pain voice instead of having that one event to tie memories and voice together. I just never considered my different styles being so different they get a name, but it makes sense that different identities have different personalities and styles.
“I have some confidence in this odd choice only because I have heard myself teaching over a number of years, and this voice has been honed as my body and voice and expression developed in conversation with other writers.” If you have this many different voices, good on you. I truly do not think my voices are all that different to get different names and to feel differently about them. How many times can I write different.
Do I hate the academic voice? Not really. I don’t even give it thought. It just happens. I know the assignment I have to give and that voice just happens. This is what I prefer to write in, and I find the blog voice more fun, but I wouldn’t really name the two other than academic and casual voice. They can kinda flow into each other, as my acadmic voice doesn’t too crazy with the vocab. I would use the terms here too, cause we gotta write blogs on the concepts, so. I don’t really see the different voices I have in the creative way she does. I just be writing, she is doing a little too much to me but good for her. She found herself and that’s nice.
“I believe that that toolbox—all of a writer’s go-to words and phrases and comfortable sentence constructions—is what many writers have meant when they talk about ‘authentic voice.'” Yo. This is why I quote as I go, cause look at that. I basically said the same thing.
This is getting a little too crazy and wild for me. I get the point, but this author going crazy style with what voice is. Just a summarized comment about how this is going overall, just a bit too much.
“It bothers me that many people feel alienated from this essential element of expression, from writing as a way to think and have conversations with our past and present selves.” Only think about writing to myself when I am doing one of those write to future you things. I write for others to hear me yapping. Share my thoughts and feelings on things, tell my story, share my ideas.
“Brenda Ueland writes of this act of discovery in her classic book If You Want to Write: ‘At last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had. Not to preach to them, but to give it to them if they cared to hear it.'” Me writing my blogs
I feel like the rest was just repeating stuff that was either mentioned before in the article or stuff I said myself so I didn’t really pull any more quotes. Basically, I agree with a lot of it but this author reaaaaallly likes voices and writing about voices. A fellow yapper it seems. Maybe I am just a hater.
Now “On Students’ Rights to Their Own Texts: A Model of Teacher Response”
“… an assumption that its author intended to convey some meaning and made the choices most likely to convey the meaning”. People have said some deep things about my work sometimes, and ya know what so true. Did I mean it that way? no. No I did not. But thank you for thinking I had these deep meanings and messages. I will take it. If you find some deeper meanings, reasonings, messages, or whatevers, power to you. Never intended but yeah sure we can go with I meant it that way. I always find this concept funny, that authors always mean their writing to be so deep. Nah man. I just be writing.
Discourse mention! Love discourse.
“But whatever the reason for our grant authority, what we are conceding is the author’s right to make statements in exactly the way they are made in order to say exactly what the writer wishes to say”. I mean that is the hope. I don’t always get to write however I want. But so true, yes, I do be wishing to write these words, and I be writing them, in this order.
“This claim can be so powerful that we will tolerate writing from that author which appears to be unusually difficult, even obscure or down-right confusing” I have never done this. Only confusing stuff I read is for classes. I also have never uped my writing to be confusing. Is this a thing to do. Write so much you can truly do whatever and thus you can write confusing on purpose because you reached that level in the writing community.
Do you guys give me authority to do that or… (just kidding I would never. I like writing like this)
But this is a cool thing we can do for each other. Play around with how we know each other and give authority to each other.
“not rewriting from the author”. Wrong. I think that last author did too much and I would not want to work to read from that again.
For confusing things I read for class, I wonder why in the world academic langauge be like that. Just write. Just say what you mean. Why we gotta be confusing. Write things simply please.
The amount of stuff I read where ten pages in they go “basically____” and summarize their nonsense in a sentence that did indeed explain all of the garbo I just read so well I got it all. So, why not just do that. Why all this nonsense. Just do that good one sentence that you do anyway. All these fancy words and examples for who. For what.
“Hence, the teacher more often than the student determines what the writing will be about, the form it will take, and the criteria that will determine its success”. So true. I have always hated when teachers go “don’t write to me” because more often than not, they are the ones giving a grade on the writing. My first 100 paged paper reached 100 pages cause the teacher was confused on my subject. We did get to choose whatever discourse community we wanted, but she didn’t understand gaming at all, so it took 100 pages to get an understanding.
It is also places you submit work too as well. You pick what to write within what they give you. Do we ever really write for ourselves then, if there are always all these rules to get things accepted? Even these blogs have to be about the readings. There is always some sort of rule.
“Denying students control of what they want to say must surely reduce incentive and also, presumably, the likelihood of improvement”. Okay, I was hating a bit for the whole rules thing. But I do like when I am given a prompt and can choose something within that prompt. I like having a check that I am on the right track, that I fit that prompt. Yes, this is in a way, controlling what we write. But, consider that some people are weirdos and would write about some nonsense. Like if we gave kids the choice to write about whatever, first off how many would even write. Secondly, how many would write some stupid gen alpha garbo. Not all writing ideas are that great guys. Some thoughts are meant to be thoughts. College kids I feel like are fine to write whatever, cause it is college you are paying to do your nonsense. But kids need guidance. Might kill their creative spirit but oh well, their creative spirit scares me nowadays. Okay I know that was pro silencing voices, but truly the kids are scary.
I love the random “We asked students to write an essay on the Lindbergh kindnapping trial” after the intro was about writers getting authority. What do students know about a random kidnapping, hello. What the heck is this subject coming from. Out of all the topics to choose…
See now I do not know enough about trials cause I thought the emotion was correct. I thought you would want to pull at the jury’s emotions. Seen that in TV shows. Guess it is wrong. But, funny enough, I did read it as satire. Maybe cause I am a silly guy I read John as the same. I just imagined some class clown doing this whole big speech thing in a classroom set up like a court, with some students playing the jury. Cause I have done things like this and it wasn’t a kidnapping, it was some silly crime we had to write/act out, so people had FUN. It was FUN. I thought John was being a silly fun guy.
So I was right and wrong. Right about the emotion…. maybe still wrong on if he was being silly? Idk what is going on if I am honest but I like doing fake court stuff it is fun.
Got it in the next sentence, know the context or goal before you judge the piece.
I feel like we don’t need to put this all on the teacher. Yes, have conversations about what the student meant to say. Good. But that can be done with the peer review stuff. Have students actually read other students work by getting them to write the main idea of the writing, say if it was effective, what worked or what didn’t work, stuff like that. I always figured stuff out from peer reviews like that. Mostly, how little people actually read my work as they just wanted to get the assignment done. But, those who really read it, I got to see how they interpreted my work.
Problem is that everyone interprets things differently. I mean we see that with these blogs all the time. So, keep in mind that people will read things differently. If the main idea is similar enough, the writing did its job.
Okay got to the part in the reading (page 6) where it was giving questions, I did a similar thing. See. I know what I am doing. I also said to ask questions.
Oh by the way I stopped doing quotes cause the article wasn’t copying and pasting right and I didn’t feel like typing all that stuff out so I am summarizing things. You’re welcome. Less to read. Still a yap from me though. But I think I got the point. Don’t need to comment on much else as the rest was more examples of understanding what the writer meant to say by talking to the reader, then implementing possible feedback to get things to match up. We haven’t done too much of that. Maybe in thesis class we can do some of this. I mean, whenever we talk to each other I do get new ideas. I get new ideas on the readings when I read your blogs. So, I guess the point of this is how important feedback is. Make sure people know what your writing is about in some way, get others to see your work, cause your stuff might be a bit confusing. Not wrong, just needs to be workshoped to be understood. That is the way we should think about our writing.
It is why I love egg time, sharing out our different ideas. What we noticed. Gets us to know if people understood our blogs but also to see how the readings sparked so many different ideas. I am always interested in seeing how people read things differently. Fascinating to me.
This was good to note as someone who wants to be a professor, cause I have had feedback before that didn’t make sense to me as I felt I did that task. But now I see the importance of talking things out and making sure we communicate our intentions of our writing.
