Writer-based purposes for writing

Because writing is, or should be, for yourself first of all, everything you write involves at least some purpose that benefits you. Of course, expressing yourself is a fundamental purpose of all writing. Without the satisfaction of expressing your thoughts, feelings, reactions, knowledge, or questions, you might not make the effort to write in the first place.

A closely related purpose is learning: Writing helps you discover what you think or feel, simply by using language to identify and compose your thoughts. Writing not only helps you form ideas, but actually to promote observing and remembering. If you write down what you observe about people, places, or things, you can actually "see" them more dearly. Similarly, if you write down facts, ideas, experiences, or reactions to your readings, you will remember them longer. Writing and rewriting facts, dates, definitions, impressions, or personal experiences will improve your powers of recall on important occasions such as examinations and job interviews.

Journal exercises for writers

Choose three of the exercises below and write for ten minutes on each. Date and number each entry.

1. Make an "authority" list of activities, subjects, ideas, places, people, or events you already know something about. List as many topics as you can. If your reaction is, "I'm not really anauthority on anything," then imagine you've met someone from another school, state, country, or historical period. Relative to that audience, what are you an "authority" on?
2. Choose one activity, sport, or hobby that you do well and that others might admire you for. In the form of a letter to a friend, describe the steps or stages of the process through which you acquired that skill or ability.
3. In two or three sentences, answer the following question: "I have trouble writing because..."
4. In a few sentences, answer the following question: "In my previous classes and from my own writing experience, I've learned that the three most important rules about writing are..."
5. Describe your own writing rituals. When, where, and how do you write best?
6. Write an open journal entry. Describe events from your day, images, impressions, bits of conversation — anything that catches your interest. Read the following essay by Roy Hoffman for possible ideas for open journal entries.

Writing about investigations

Investigating begins with questions. What causes the greenhouse effect? How does illiteracy affect a person's life? How does rape affect the lives of women in America? How is AIDS transmitted? How do TV rating systems work? How do colleges recruit applicants? What can you find out about a famous person's personality, background, and achievements? At what age do children first acquire simple mathematical abilities? What kind of employee is most likely to be promoted? Why are sunsets yellow, then orange, red, and finally purple?

Investigating also carries an assumption that probing for answers to such questions — by observing and remembering, reading sources, interviewing key people, or conducting surveys — will uncover truths not generally known or accepted. As you dig for information, you learn who, what, where, and when. You may even learn how and why.

The purpose of investigating is to uncover or discover facts, opinions, and reactions for yourself and then to report that information to other people who want to know. A report strives to be as objective and informative as possible. It may summarize other people's judgments, but it does not editorialize. It may represent opposing viewpoints or arguments, but it does not argue for one side or the other. A report is a window on the world, allowing readers to see the information for themselves.

Keep a journal (blog): practice your writing

Many writers keep some kind of notebook or journal in which they write down their thoughts for later use. Some writers call it a journal, a place for their day-to-day thoughts. Other writers call it a daybook, a place to record ideas, collected information, possible outlines, titles, questions — anything related to the process of writing, thinking, and learning.

Scientists keep daily logs in which they record data or describe behavior. The word "journal" is the general term referring to "a place for daily writing." Whatever you call it, it should become part of your writing ritual. In it should go all kinds of anting. Bits and pieces of experience or memory that might come in handy later. Reactions to what you're reading. A log of the problems you face as you write. Memorable sayings or quotations. Short summaries of what you're reading in your classes. Your journal is a place to practice, a closet where all your "fish paintings" go.

For maximum flexibility, your journal should be a loose-leaf notebook, so you can add, take out, or rearrange materials. Some writers, though, prefer a spiral notebook, a manila folder with pockets, or a computer disk. Whatever format you choose, make sure that you feel comfortable with it. As the following list indicates, there are many kinds of journal entries.

• Warm-up writing. Writing, like any other kind of activity, improves when you loosen up, stretch, get the kinks out, practice a few lines. Any daybook or journal entry gives you a chance towarm up.
• Collecting and shaping exercises. Some journal entries will help youcollect information by observing, remembering or investigating people, places, events, or objects. You can also record quotationsor startling statistics for a future writing topic. Other entries will give you a chance to practice organizing your information. Strategies of development, such as comparison/contrast, definition, classification, process analysis, and casual analysis will help you discover and shape ideas.
• Practice in writing for a specified audience. In some entries, you need to play a role, to imagine you are in a specific situation and writing for a defined audience. For example, you might write a letter of application to a college admissions officer or a letter to your employer asking for a week's vacation.
• Identifying and solving writing problems. Your journal is also the place to keep a log, a running account of your writing plans and problems. The log helps you record your progress and identify and solve problems as they occur.
• Summarizing, responding, and recording vocabulary entries. A journal is an excellent place to summarize articles for other courses, respond to class discussions, or record definitions of words you look up in the dictionary.

For most journal entries, try to let your ideas flow easily. Don't stop to fix spelling or punctuation. Focus on your train of thought.

Revision: importance in academic writing

When writers revise a rough draft, they literally "resee" their subject — and then modify the draft to fit the new vision. Revision is more than just tinkering with a word here and there; revision leads to larger changes — new examples or details, a different organization, or a new perspective. You accomplish these changes by adding, deleting, substituting, or reordering words, sentences, and paragraphs.

Although revision begins the moment you get your first idea, most revisions are based on the reactions or anticipated reactions of the audience to your draft. You often play the role of audience yourself by putting the draft aside and rereading it later when you have some distance from your writing. Wherever you feel readers might not get your point, you revise to make it clearer. You may also get feedback from readers in a class workshop, suggesting that you collect more or different information, alter the shape of your draft to improve the flow of ideas, or clarify your terminology.

As a result of your rereading and your readers' suggestions, you may change your thesis or write for an entirely different audience. Revising also includes editing to improve word choice, grammar, usage, or punctuation and proofreading for typos and other surface errors.

Audience analysis before writing

If you are writing to communicate to other readers, analyzing your probable audience will help you answer some basic questions:

• How much information or evidence is enough? What should I assume my audience already knows? What should I not tell them? What do they believe? Will they readily agree with me or will they be antagonistic?
• How should I organize my writing? How can I get my reader's attention? Can I just describe my subject and tell a story or should I analyze everything in a logical order? Should I put my best examples or arguments first or last?
• Should I write informally, with simple sentences and easy vocabulary, or should I write in a more elaborate or specialized style, with technical vocabulary?

Analyze your audience by considering the following questions. As you learn more about your audience, the possibilities for your own role as a writer will become clearer.

1. Audience profile. How narrow or broad is your audience? Is it a narrow and defined audience — a single person, such as your Aunt Mary, or a group with clear common interests, such as the zoning board in your city or the readers of Organic Gardening? Is it a broad and diverse audience: educated readers who wish to be informed on current events, American voters as a whole, or residents of your state? Do your readers have identifiable roles? Can you determine their age, sex, economic status, ethnic background, or occupational category?
2. Audience-subject relationship. Consider what your readers know about your subject. If they know very little about it, you'll need to explain the basics; if they already know quite a bit, you can get right to more difficult or complex issues. Also estimate their probable attitude toward this subject. Are they likely to be sympathetic or hostile?
3. Audience-writer relationship. What is your relationship with the readers? Do you know each other personally? Do you have anything in common? Will your audience be likely to trust what you say or will they be skeptical about your judgments? Are you the expert on this particular subject and the reader a novice? Or are you a novice and your reader the expert? (If you're a novice writing to an expert, absolute honesty and careful reliance on evidence will help win you a hearing.)
4. Writer's role. To communicate effectively with your audience, you should also consider your own role or perspective. Of the many roles that you could play (friend, big sister or brother, student of psychology, music fan, employee of a fast-food restaurant, and so on), choose one that will be effective for your purpose and audience. If, for example, you are writing to sixth-graders about nutrition, you could choose the perspective of a concerned older brother or sister, but your writing might be more effective if you assume the role of a person who has worked in fast-food restaurants for three years and knows what goes into hamburgers, French fries, and milkshakes.

Writers may write to a real audience, or they may create an audience. Sometimes the relationship between writer and reader is real (sister writing to brother), and so the writer starts with a known audience and writes accordingly. Sometimes, however, writers begin writing and gradually discover or create an audience in the process of writing. Knowing the audience guides the writing, but the writing may create an audience as well.

Writing circumstances and rituals for effective writing

As you feel you have to start writing some assignment, either academic for your school or a business note for your work, you have to settle the writing environment right. Your writing environment must assist and help your writing process, rather than disturb you; common sense. But for ones, that calming, relaxing and ideas-generating environment is a quite cozy bedroom with a laptop on knees, and for others it might be smoky small office, keypad in ashes, and a pile or empty coffee cups interfering free motion of cmputer mouse. Regardless of what are your writing rituals, you must discover them and follow your writing rituals as you prepare to write.

The goal of the right writing atmoshpere

In order to determine what are your bet writing rutials that enable you uncover your writing potential, you must pay close attention and discover under what circumtance your writing flows by itself. What are the settings arround you and in the comptur that let you concentrate only on writing? The purpose of your writing rituals and correct writing circumstance is to cause no obstacles between the flow-generating mind and the text-document being filled up through your fingers. Once you notice you write smoothly and naturally, take a minute and memorize the setting so that you understand what makes your writing calm and natural.

The writing setting

Sounds, freshness or air, temperature, interior -- all of these any many other factors influence your mind as you write. Personally I love to swing on a chair lightly while writing, and I love to have my keypad lit very heavily with an desk lamp, even at bright days. You might figure you write best at your campus library, or in your dorm at night with your headphones on, or any other setting. There is no universal setting; you must find one that suits you best.

There are, however, general rules that most of the times help everyone. The room in which you write must be:

• quiet
• not too big
• well lit
• related to the subject of your writing

While the first 3 points are obvious, the 4-th one might sound weird. Let me explain: if you are writing for your business class, you better write in the business classroom. If you are writing a literature review, write it in that literature classroom. If you are writing for your boss, write at your workplace or in that conference room in your office. In other words, make the interior create the feeling of the subject of your writing. Studies have shown essay writing in the environment relative to the subject of your writing does help the ultimate writing.

Computer environment for free writing

I hate when that MS Word does not show me the entire page on the screen. And I cannot go on to actual writing if the margins, widow/orphan control and line spacing is not set to my preferences. I believe you also have your requirements to your word procesing application.

Take advantage of Macros to set up your word processor working environment.

Conclusion

Find the circumstances at which your writing goes smoothly and naturally, remember those circumstanes and turn them to your writing rituals.