What’s your writing process? Glad you asked! My writing process really depends on the context. As a journalism major, I never really grasped journalistic writing. I didn't feel like my classes had taught it and The Ithacan news section never really stuck with me either. That being said, I love writing essays, reflections, and even this blog post. It brings me joy. I think I have a very strong voice that has only improved with mandatory yet dull school assignments. I like to use that joy and that voice derived from my writing as an advantage, and usually as a guide for where my writing will go. This paragraph for instance. I have not stopped once to reread it, yet I am confident that it will be, at the very least, complete. I know I have all the moving parts as I started of with an intro, and we're slowly but surely coming to our conclusion. This is an example of how I would let the joy of writing guide my paragraph, and I am intentionally not going to clean this paragraph up, so anyone stumbling upon it can see what I mean by writing something complete but not perfect.
Do you sweat it? If so, how does that manifest itself and what can you do to overcome your personal writing challenges?
I would say no. No I do not sweat it. I love to write, and although journalistic writing never clicked with me, I never really sweat that either because I know writing is what I'm best at. I wish I knew more about it, and I don't think I could write an acceptable article, but I am confident that I could learn. What I do stress about is if I should be writing at all. I've made it clear that I love to write, but I feel very far away from a career in print journalism. Our curriculum at IC is very multimedia heavy, which I love, but I do wonder if I would thrive in print journalism. I rarely write out of pleasure anymore, not because the pleasure has gone away, but because I'm busy or lack motivation. I wish I wrote more, and that is something I stress, but the only way to solve that is to pick up a pen and start up again.
Talk about writing on deadline. What’s your habit? Do you procrastinate or get on with it?
Personally I am not a fan of harsh deadlines. Kind of the kiss of death in journalism, but it's true, I love the wiggle room that OT/PT or Computer Science majors get with their projects. Struggling with deadlines hints to a larger issue in my life that I have been tackling for years, but the solution is to simply practice doing what you don't want to do. Insider secret: this blog post is not due until TUESDAY at MIDNIGHT and right now is 11PM on SUNDAY. Now don't worry, I'll be in bed by midnight, but right now, I am practicing doing something I don't want to do. I know I have plenty of other assignments due on Wednesday and by planning ahead and doing this one now, and therefore will have time to do my other assignments which will ultimately result in a better grade in those classes. Most people probably think it is weird to think about things like this, but I try to apply the most amateur psychology lessons to my life to lead a more effective one. Hopefully as a journalist, I will want to do all my "homework", in other words, I hope I care about my reporting. I hope it is important for me to get things in on time, and I won't even have to practice this opposite-emotion-action behavior (that is what DBT psychologists call doing what you don't want to do) because it will be valuable reporting.
Talk about structure. Find us a well-written story, share it and break it down for us. What does the author do to make it affecting and powerful? How does the structure of the story help the writer achieve the maximum effect?
https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/10/4/17933530/sexual-assault-me-too
Linked above, is a opinion piece about how it is normal to not be assaulted. Quite honestly I didn't think it needed to be written and disliked the content, but I really liked the way it drove the point home. Her conclusion was especially powerful:
"In my life, I’ve had experiences of all kinds. Unfortunately, I have been assaulted. I have also not been assaulted. The difference was never what I was wearing, how much I flirted, or how much I was drinking. The only difference was whether or not the men felt it was okay or not to assault."
I thought it was a brilliant reiteration of what she had already said, but came across fresh. And like I said, I do not like this article, BUT I only unpacked my personal feelings about it after I had a chance to reflect. Before I thought in depth about it, I was truly on her side with the whole point of this piece, and I think for a persuasion piece that is imperative to your impact.
Op-eds in general are meant to lay out: This thing is happening; Here is my perspective from my expertise and/or life. With the recent anonymous NYtimes op-ed outing the anti-Trump agenda within the trump administration, I still didn't get why this person was moving forward with their confession. Undercover missions are much more effective when they're covert, and the "why" of it all wasn't really driven home for me. With this Vox article, I felt differently upon reading it, even though upon reflection after reading it I came to the same conclusion as when reading the NYTimes piece. The difference was the writing. Now, maybe the moral of the story is that I am just very bad at identifying the "why" of articles, or that sexual assault stories will always cut deeper to the core of female college-aged women more than federal political occurrences, but I know that the writing style of both article was different in tone and cadence, and I felt differently upon reading each.
While on the topic of writing, I wanted to throw in this ~casual~ powerpoint I stumbled upon on Pinterest while I was in high school, and I still reference to help me with essay writing. I don't follow it closely but one thing it changed for me was writing the intro AFTER your body is done. Game changer.
