This semester, I wrote blog posts
in many different genres and styles. I learned how to adapt my tone and writing
style based on the formality and audience of the different posts. My posts fit
into the course theme of “Food, Feelings, and Film” because many of the posts
were about food. While a few were about my feelings based on different films,
the majority were about food: food places on campus, personal anecdotes about
family meals, or reflections about articles and videos about food. Writing
these assignment blog posts helped me feel better prepared for the larger
assignments in this class because I got practice writing about food, and
testing out different writing techniques. I chose these specific blog posts to
revise because I feel that they all show a different side of my writing style. They
are all of a different genre, and have very different writing styles, despite all
being about food. Every Year was my very first blog post of the semester, and
it is a personal anecdote about home and family. The Buzzfeed video reflections
show an informal side to my writing. The Eat Drink Man Woman Voiceover allowed
me to be creative in my writing and to write about something with which I was
not too familiar. I included the Cox Hall blog post because it was my favorite
of the semester. Since I wrote for my high school newspaper, this style of
writing is something that I am pretty familiar with and enjoy writing. I also
included my last assignment of the semester, the Proust Cooking Show script. This
was one of the hardest assignments for me to write, but I think that my
revision really improves the piece. I have arranged the posts chronologically because
I wanted to show my improvement throughout the semester.
Original: Every Year
Revision: Every
Year Revision
Original: Buzzfeed
Video Reflections
Revision: Buzzfeed
Video Reflection Revision
Original: Eat
Drink Man Woman Voiceover
Revision: Eat
Drink Man Woman Voiceover Revision
Original: Cox Hall
Revision: Cox Hall
Revision
Original: Proust
Cooking Show Script
Revision: Proust
Cooking Show Script Revision
I feel that my writing process has
evolved throughout the semester. In my first blog post, Every Year, I wrote how
I did in high school: all in one sitting, without any revisions. As the
semester progressed however, I learned how beneficial it can be to write
something, take a break, and come back to it later to revise and reread. That
is how I was writing in the last few blog posts. I feel that these specific
blog posts are reflective of our course learning objectives because they
reflect my writing in multiple genres, they show my ability to analyze the work
of another person and create something new, and these posts show the growth in
my writing throughout the semester.
One of the most powerful changes
that I made to my first blog post was the addition of just one word. In the
original, my opening sentence was “It’s the same every year,” but I changed it
to “It’s the same tradition every year”. I wanted to add this word because it
sets a warmer and more inviting tone to my blog post. In my post, Buzzfeed
Video Reflection, I completely rearranged one of the sentences during my
revision. The original sentence was: “While some of
the dishes supposedly originated in those countries, the people tasting the
food said that the meal did not look or taste like the authentic version,” but
I changed it to: “The people tasting the
food said that the meal did not look or taste like the authentic version, even
though the dish was said to have originated in that country”. I felt that in
that paragraph, I had used a similar sentence structure multiple times in a row
in the original. I knew that by changing just one sentence, it would help break
up my thoughts and the paragraph would flow more nicely. My revision of the Eat
Drink Man Woman Voiceover helped me realize the importance of specificity. In
the original, I wrote: “To make my chicken broth, I let the raw chicken and
boiling water rest in a pot for a long time”. In my revision, I changed “for a
long time” to “for a few hours”. I decided to make this change because it makes
my voiceover seem more realistic by being more specific. After submitting my
original version of my Cox Hall blog post, I noticed that my sentence structure
is very repetitive. I used a lot of long sentences, and didn’t break it up with
shorter ones. In my revision, I worked on fixing that. In my original, I wrote:
“Especially for freshmen, who are required to purchase the unlimited meal swipe
plan for the Dobbs University Center, having to spend the precious and very
limited Dooley Dollars can be a disincentive to eating there”. In my revision,
I changed it to: “Freshmen are required to purchase the unlimited meal swipe
plan, which only comes with a small amount of Dooley Dollars. Having to spend
the precious and very limited Dooley Dollars can be a disincentive to eating at
Cox Hall”. Not only does my revision add more detail and clarification to the
point I am making, but it also helps add variety to the sentence structure that
I use often throughout the blog post. Finally, in my Proust Cooking Show Script
blog post, I changed the parts were I quoted Proust. Since it is a script and
will be spoken, it is important to actually say that I am using Proust words
instead of just quoting them on paper like I did in the original. In my revised
version, I began each Proust quote by explicitly stating that I was quoting
Proust.
Overall, these blog posts helped me recognize some common problems I make in my writing. One of the most common mistakes I make is having little variation of sentence structure. Now that I know this, I will be more conscious about varying my sentence structure while writing my first draft.
Overall, these blog posts helped me recognize some common problems I make in my writing. One of the most common mistakes I make is having little variation of sentence structure. Now that I know this, I will be more conscious about varying my sentence structure while writing my first draft.
