Blog10- Writing Process

My writing process for my literacy narrative started off with me just discussing in class what we were going to write about. We spoke about different past experiences with writing in class. When I thought about the different experiences I had with writing as a child I kept a mental not in my head. Before I jotted down stories that I remebered I answered the questions that were given by Dr Chandler that could help us get an idea what we wanted to write our literacy narrative on. From those questions I crossed out alot of stories that I thought would be great for my paper and kept only about 2. I also came up with new things to put down in my paper when I answered those questions. Once I formulated the stories I was going to write down I wrote a little bit in my first draft. As the days went by I let the draft sit till I figured out what else I wanted to say. Finally when I finished my draft I read it over and took out certain things I felt was irrelavant to the literacy narrative theme. I'm still figuring what the theme is because Dr Chandler wrote a couple of suggestions on improving my literacy narrative that showed I needed a focus.

blog 8-literacy narrative

Writing was fun for me when I was younger. It was just like playing barbies, I could express myself behind something; I hid behind the barbies and with writing I hid behind the pencil. These feelings came to me during the time that I heard of different "cultural stories" that my dad told me. One being that he is the "american dream". He was raised in Puerto Rico, grew up very poor, came to America with little money, went to college and became a successful engineer. He would tell me "you could be anything you want to be". Coming from his mouth it meant alot. My writing would be all over the place because I was under the impression that I could be who ever I wanted to be and if that was a "writer" at the moment then so it was. As soon as I was taught how to put sentences together in first and second grade I began to make short stories for my entertainment at home. One of my first short stories was a story of a girl’s life. I wrote one or two sentences on each page an majority of the story was illustrated through drawings.
Furthermore, my earliest memories of reading books were with the themes about "being anything you wanted to be". I also read "rags to riches" stories which correlated with that theme. One of the stories that sticks out the most was the Cinderella story. She lost her father, was treated horribly by her step mother, and one day all of that changed and she became a princess and lived happily ever after. The idea of becoming something instantly was the theme that played in my head when I was younger so my dreams were endless. Madonna was a huge influence on the way I wrote as a child to. Her idea of "express yourself" "be who you want to be" made me feel that there wouldn't be any critiques in writing because people like those who express themselves.
My father reading to me had alot to do with me thinking of writing as a fun process to. He read alot of children science books to me and read them in different voices to make them fun. I remember thinking how cool it was to know how to read plus I thought my father was amazing. That was the first memory that I had of me knowing how smart my father was. All of my ideas of being smart and knowing how to be creative came from my father’s animated story telling. I even imitated him when I started to learn how to read. It made me feel better when I read to do that because it gave me confidence as a story teller.
As soon as I got into fourth grade and really started to get my writing read through school reports, I realized writing wasn't as I believed it to be. As the essay written by Dr. Chandler said, some of these myths are seen as "the way it is" and before teachers actually critiqued my work I believed that "expressing myself" truly was great and had no consequences. Nevertheless, they did and those consequences were people's criticzims. Some of the criticzims were that my writing didn't make sense, that my grammar was horrible, and that my thoughts weren't organized. I struggled with the idea that I wasn't a good writer for years when this happened. What made it harder for me was when I started letting my mother proof read my reports. She would critique the whole entire paper without any positive feedback. This made me shift my ideas of writing as "a boring thought out process" instead of it being a fun way to "express yourself".
I also started to relate writing with school which meant it wasn’t fun. Everytime I had to write a sentence or two to anyone that was non-related to school I would take forever to put it together as if it was going to be handed in for a grade. I would read it to myself alot of times and come up with some reason to change what I wrote around. Furthermore, the more I started to dislike anything with writing the more I avoided it. This included me reading books. I spent more time watching TV then putting my time into a great novel.
At this point in my life I started to feel the pressures of “the real world” which was that hard work paid off but for me my idea of “being who I wanted to be” still stuck to me. I knew what my father taught me when I was younger influenced me alot. However, what was missing in the things that my father taught me? I then realized what was missing was me working hard for what I wanted to accomplish. My father didn’t tell me stories about how hard he worked to get where he was and the fairy tale stories I read when I was younger spoke nothing about working hard either. I realized I valued success in life but inorder to do that I had to improve myself which meant takeing constructive critizicm as a tool for improvement not failure.
When I accepted the idea of “working hard” I was already in my teens. Writing improved a little bit but the way I felt about writing shifted again. I started to enjoy writing as a pass time. The internet definitly encouraged this shift. During my first experience with writing on the internet I would send emails to the boys I liked. This made it much easier to say how I felt since I could hide behind something plus the message got there fast. This then grew into me wanting to write poems to express how I felt about others. I looked up different poetry websites to see other poems and wrote a couple myself from some ideas that I read on these websites. Most of my poems were about love and betrayal. During this time in my life reading and writing poems on the internet helped relieve the stress I was having based on these two subjects. Furthermore, I started to gain a little more confidence as a writer when I read some of my poems to my friends and they were very impressed.
When instant messaging became popular I would write to my friends all the time. I probably expressed more of my feelings about any subject to them through instant message than face to face. One of my friends lost her mother to cancer when I used writing as a tool to express myself. Being that she was away in college when it happened I would communicate with her through instant message. I felt more comfortable to be emotionally there for her through writing then through the phone because I couldn’t handle hearing her cry. Through writing I was able to collect my thoughts about how sorry I was and how much of a good friend she was to me. I sent her a couple of cards and wrote some of my thoughts down about how I felt about the whole thing. Our friendship grew more because of the support I gave her and she told me so many times how much better those cards made her feel.
I still saw a difference between writing in school and writing on my spare of time. It wasn’t till my senior year of highschool when I took a creative writing class that I enjoyed writing for school. The class made me feel relaxed just like I did when I was writing to a friend. In class we were able to put our thoughts together in just about any subject. It was the first time in school I was able to write how a wanted and not be critiqued on grammar. The class was meant for us to become more comfortable with our writing abilities and it really helped. The teacher gave me alot of positive feedback on some short stories I wrote which brought me out of my comfort zone of writing creative pieces just for mine and my friends eyes.
Now when ever I post up a status on Facebook I really dig deep on a subject that I want to talk about. Most of them are funny topics but they always are thought out and filled with alot of creativity. I always get alot of comments when ever I post something up. Most of the comments say how funny I am or how I have a great personality. One person even wrote to me saying they never spoke to me before and they can already tell I have a creative personality. I feel that the values my father taught me shaped me into the writer that I am today because his values taught me to be fearless.
Regardless of writing being a obstacle that I had to overcome and still struggle with at times, I find it to have lead me into who I am today. The criticzms I received growing up showed me how the world really was. My fathers stories showed me who I could be. Having had gone through different events in my life that included writing showed me how important it was for me to work hard. Even though my future plans don’t involve me wanting to be a writer I know that all the special parts that I received through writing will help me along the way. Those special parts include being creative, having the strength to represent myself how ever I want to, and organize plus plan well what I want to do. Writing formulated my identity as “not being a quiter” and with that identity I continue fighting for what I want. Now what I’m fighting for is to graduate college and I will never quit.

Blog7-in class blog

What I learned about writing is that there is proof that writing is a natural process. People didn't use writing just as a form of expressing their language. They even showed a seperation between certain styles of writing and language; even if a language evolved into something else the written language had either stayed the same or practiced completly different rules. I learned that people are influenced by others unconciously which can have an effect on the way they write. Concepts like "cultural stories" and values form people's out look on writing as being a "fun pass time" or "organized action". Lastly, writing can be defined by however it is used. If a group of people use writing to communicate then that is how they will define writing.

My philosophy of writing is that it is biological and influenced through cultural stories. People do feel the need to write. As we are growing up we scribble alot of symbols before we are taught how to form sentences. Why do we do that? Even people who have been kept from learning how to speak, when given a writing utensil scrible what ever they can. It is influenced because people form concepts of what writing is through opinion leaders, teachers, and "cultural stories".

Blog 5

Writing was fun for me when I was younger. It was just like playing barbies, I could express myself behind something; I hid behind the barbies and with writing I hid behind the pencil. These feelings came to me during the time that I heard of different "cultural stories". My dad told me about how he is the "american dream". He was raised in Puerto Rico, grew up very poor, came to America with little money, went to college and became a successful engineer. He would tell me "you could be anything you want to be". Coming from his mouth it meant alot. My writing would be all over the place because I was under the impression that I could be who ever I wanted to be and if that was a "writer" at the moment then so it was. As soon as I was taught how to put sentences together in first and second grade I began to make short stories for my entertainment at home.One of my first short stories was a story of a girl’s life. I wrote one or two sentences on each page an majority of the story was illustrated through drawings.
Furthermore, my earliest memories of reading books were with the themes about "being anything you wanted to be". I also read "rags to riches" stories which correlated with that theme. One of the stories that sticks out the most was the Cinderella story. She lost her father, was treated horribly by her step mother, and one day all of that changed and she became a princess and lived happily ever after. The idea of becoming something instantly was the theme that played in my head when I was younger so my dreams were endless. Madonna was a huge influence on the way I wrote as a child to. Her idea of "express yourself" "be who you want to be" made me feel that there wouldn't be any critiques in writing because people like those who express themselves.

As soon as I got into fourth grade and really started to get my writing read through school reports, I realized writing wasn't as I believed it to be. As the essay written by Dr. Chandler said, some of these myths are seen as "the way it is" and before teachers actually critiqued my work I believed that "expressing myself" truly was great and had no consequences. Nevertheless, they did and those consequences were people's criticzims. Some of the criticzims were that my writing didn't make sense, that my grammar was horrible, and that my thoughts weren't organized. I struggled with the idea that I wasn't a good writer for years when this happened. What made it harder for me was when I started letting my mother proof read my reports. She would critique the whole entire paper without any positive feedback. This made me shift my ideas of writing as "a boring thought out process" instead of it being a fun way to "express yourself".

I also started to relate writing with school which meant it wasn’t fun. Everytime I had to write a sentence or two to anyone that was non-related to school I would take forever to put it together as if it was going to be handed in for a grade. I would read it to myself alot of times and come up with some reason to change what I wrote around. Furthermore, the more I started to dislike anything with writing the more I avoided it. This included me reading books. I spent more time watching TV then putting my time into a great novel.
At this point in my life I started to feel the pressures of “the real world” which was that hard work paid off but for me my idea of “being who I wanted to be” still stuck to me. I knew that my fathers influence on what he taught me when I was younger was important. What was missing in the things that my father taught me? I then realized what was missing was me working hard for what I wanted to accomplish. My father didn’t tell me stories about how hard he worked to get were he was and the fairy tale stories I read when I was younger spoke nothing about working hard either. I realized I valued success in life but inorder to do that I had to improve myself which meant takeing constructive critizicm as a tool for improvement not failure.
When I accepted the idea of “working hard” I was already in my teens. Writing improved a little bit but the way I felt about writing shifted again. I started to enjoy writing as a pass time. The internet definitly encouraged this shift. During my first experience with writing on the internet I would send emails to the boys I liked. This made it much easier to say how I felt since I could hide behind something plus the message got there fast. This then grew into me wanting to write poems to express how I felt about others.

Blog 2

The factors that influenced our relationship to written language in the essay written on cultural stories were mainstream stories that are also known as "literacy myths". These myths were things that were told for many years to groups of people. Some of these myths include " freedom of speech" and "equality". The way these myths influenced writers could have been when writers write about things that are inapropriate. To them, its "just their uniqueness as a writer" to the essay it means " they are writing this way due to their unconcious belief that "it is good to say whats on your mind because we are all free to say what we feel". Also, even though someone might believe in the myth of "freedom of speech" as being true, it doesn't ever fully prove itself because of certain things people could get away with through the media-a person who cursed Obama's name on the news could be watched over as being a threat hence his/her life wouldn't be so "free" anymore.

From a biological-linguistic perspective we can learn that writing is natural and will come to each individual because it is a necessity in the process of communication. However, this essay tells us that we learn to write through our cultural stories. We learn how to write by first believing in our "cultural myths".