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Dear Jesse,

This portfolio consists of revised versions of my writing project 1 and writing project 2.

Writing project 1 taught us about genres, how each genre has characteristics specific to them, and

learning how to translate one genre into another. Writing project 2 focused on the concept that

there is conversation going on between scholars in their writing. It is seen when ideas are being

passed down or new ones are being built on top of past ones. Each project included a translation

in genre allowing for a deeper understanding of how genre and conversation can be connected.

For my first writing project, I decided to translate the academic article “Social Media? It’s

serious! Understanding the dark side of social media” by Christian Baccarella into a children’s

book. This project allowed me to take something related to my major and incorporate it into a

class assignment, which is something I’ve never been able to do before. For the second writing

project, my conversation question was “how do I overcome writer’s block?” From this question,

I realized that the conversation revolving around writer’s block is quite small but it was okay

because I translated it into an informational Instagram post. Knowing where to start in my

revision plan was the most difficult part of this portfolio. Trying to implement the idea of

“rethink, refine, re-see” into my process was a lot easier said than done.

When I think about the growth that I have gained as a writer this quarter, I am

dumbfounded by the ways in which I have grown. By this, I mean that I had one way in which I

thought someone could grow as a writer. I thought this meant improving one grammatical skills,

by being able to make sentences flow and transition well, or articulating their thoughts and ideas

very well. And while I do still think that, I have come to realize that there are so many areas in

the art of writing where an individual can work on that can ultimately help their growth. Those
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areas would be the ideas/topics that we focused on during weeks one through nine. This includes

metacognition to translation to rhetoric and all the ones in between. The concept that helped me

grow the most this quarter as a writer is metacognition. I believe this is the week we talked about

“writing as a reader” and vice versa. This viewpoint on writing was something that I had never

heard of before and once I understood it my whole perspective of writing changed. After reading

“Ten Ways To Think About Writing: Metamorphic Musings For College Writing Student” by

Shelley Reid, the long and confusing list of all the writing rules that I have ever learned was

condensed into these basic principles that helped make everything make sense. To summarize

them quickly, Reid states firstly, to write about what you want to, to show, and to keep audience

and purpose in mind. I like how after this the author says “... this way, we write rhetorically: that

is, we pay attention to the needs of the author and the needs of the reader rather than the needs of

the teacher…” This whole article helped me sort of rewire my brain and look at writing in a

different way. It’s now something that doesn’t stress me out but rather something that helps me

expand my understanding of the topics at hand, my audiences, and lastly me as a writer.

Now my growth as a writer is definitely intertwined with how my understanding of

writing has changed/grown over the course of the quarter. I wouldn’t have grown as a writer had

my understanding not developed. This new understanding has brought out a new sense of

confidence I have in myself in terms of writing and I think from my standpoint I see that

confidence shine through in my pieces of work. But if we’re looking for something in particular

that has benefitted my understanding and have applied it to my projects, it would have to be the

idea of genre. Genre has helped my understanding expand because it has taught me to look

closer at audience, language, and more rhetorical moves when writing. In Kerry Dirk’s easy
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“Navigating Genres” he ends it by saying “...consider the rhetorical effectiveness of your

writing.” I now find myself thinking about the purpose, audience, etc. before writing a paper

when I used to brush over them before. Realizing that academic writing is also a genre has also

helped me slow down and think more intently about my essays beforehand.

While I may have strengths in my writing and as a writer, I am going to choose to focus

on my weaknesses because like we learned in class: writing can ALWAYS be improved. The first

weakness I have, which was pointed out to me by the comments/feedback I was left on my

writing projects, is that I tend to have a problem not giving enough explanation on the topic I am

writing about. For example, for my first writing project, I decided to translate my academic

article about the bad side of social media into a children’s book. My feedback suggested looking

on Compile for articles about children's books as a genre. With that comment, I was able to

conclude that in my paper I should have described more about what the genre of children’s books

would include or look like. Also in my second writing project, my question focused on writer’s

block. Obviously, I know what is meant by writer’s block but it was not until my feedback came

back and I was questioning what it meant, that I realized I did not define writer's block. I just

assumed my audience was on the same page as me when I should not have. There are two other

weaknesses I noticed I have and they are kind of related. I have trouble with run “around”

sentences and/or paragraphs which can lead to my other flaw in writing which is ranting. When

revising my writing projects, I kept running into sentences where I was just reiterating what I

was saying in a few sentences earlier just with different wording. My theory as to why I do this is

because I think I get so distracted with making the word count that my words just go in circles

repeating each other. But this can also cause me to go on rants that do not even end up relating to
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the purpose of the paper. So while revising, I ran into a couple of paragraphs where I had to

completely rewrite them.

If I had more time, I would work on revising my writing project 1 more because I feel

like I was not able to go into the kind of detail I wanted for children’s books as a genre. When

looking on Compile and the UC Library Search, I was not able to find articles that talked about

how children’s books are their own genre. In Joseph Harris’s chapter “Revising” he talks about

making a revising plan. His plan consists of considering comments, giving thought to what you

want to add, and thinking about different ideas or examples to include. These are things I did

while revising my work. Adding how children's books are their own genre and the characteristics

that are seen in them is something I could not get to.

Work Cited

Dirk, Kerry. “Navigating Spaces.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Volume 1. Eds Charles

Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. Parlor Press, 2010. 146. Web.

Reid, Shelley. “Ten Ways To Think About Writing: Metamorphic Musings For College Writing

Students.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Volume 2. Eds Charles Lowe and Pavel

Zemliansky. Parlor Press, 2010. 146. Web.

Harris, Joseph. “Revising.” Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts. 2006. 98-122.