Haven Talley - Journal 1

In generating my personal definition for writing, I took into account Heidi Estrem's piece and her personal definition. According to Writing is a Knowledge Making Activity by Heidi Estrem, there is more to writing than simply its common definition: a text or a product. Writing is something that is done to “generate new thinking.” In Heidi’s perspective, writing is something that we do to think. It is not something that we think about, and then write those thoughts down. It is something that generates new ideas, knowledge, or opinions through writing itself. Estrem also mentions that, “Writing is both relational and responsive.” In other words, written words lead people to draw conclusions based on the writing, leave people with responses and ideas concerning the writing, and also contain relational pieces to the audience.

In my perspective, I think writing is an outlet for people to express their thoughts, opinions, beliefs and ideas in a coherent way, that makes sense to either just the author (in instances such as journaling), or to the author as well as to others/an audience.

In contrast to Estrem, I think writing is something that is developed both by thinking before you write, and also thinking after you write. As you write something, you are brainstorming your thoughts and thinking about what you are going to say. In the process of writing, you think even more about your written words, which creates new ideas from your original writing. I think that thinking happens both before and after writing.

The key terms I would use to describe writing are: creative, opinionated, assemblage, thoughtful and personality. Writing is a creative act. Through writing, you are creating sentences to convey a message or an idea that you have in your mind that makes sense to your audience. In writing, you also use creativity to capture your audience through using creative, colorful language.

Writing is opinionated. Whenever someone writes their ideas down (as long as it isn’t a scientific fact), they are voicing their opinions or perspectives on whatever matter they are writing about. Through writing, people have a sort of terministic screen that is exposed in their writing.

Writing is an assemblage because in order for someone to write something that makes sense to other people, they use assemblages of previous ways of writing. Writing is also made up of assemblages of different opinions or ideas that have previously been written or created.

Writing is thoughtful. When someone writes something, they are creating their thoughts into a coherent message. They are using their thoughts, feelings, perspectives and emotions to write those thoughts down.

Lastly, another key term I would use to describe writing is personality. Because everyone is different, their personality has an effect on the way they write something or say something. The writer’s personality may be shown through how they say something in writing, or what it is that they say in writing.