journal 5

I don't consider writing and composing as two different things. I would define writing as a form of composing; they both involve putting ideas, thoughts, instructions down. Just like composing music, writing is meant to be written, often for the purpose of instruction or understanding. Without writing, a society wouldn't be able to learn from itself, or keep records of facts.

My prior experiences with writing has generally been through reading, because while I believe that writing like most things is a "learn as you do" type of skill, I have learned what works and what doesn't work in my own writing by not only trying it out for myself and finding that it wasn't what I had intended, but also through reading what other people have written and seeing what techniques they have that I can add to my own set of skills.

The terms that I think with while writing are usually things like message, understanding, audience. Imagery and context, if I'm writing something fiction. I try to think of what I want the readers of my piece to gain from my writing and write to that, because sometimes what I understand in my head isn't always the understanding that readers have when they go into reading something I've written.

Specifically in reference to project 1 and the artist's statement, I used the artist's statement to write down my research and definition of my term, and used the project itself to try and synthesize what I learned in my research. These two separate forms of composing helped me to better understand my term, I feel, because I could discuss it and also apply it by speaking about it on two different levels: one for the academic (artist's statement) and another for the general body (project). These two methods helped me understand more fully.