This week’s writing assignment poses an interesting question: what does my writing style really say about me as the author? I had never given this question much thought in the past, but it seems very relevant now. I, like many others in this online course, have written numerous online blogs about a multitude of subjects - including some very personal ones. Upon a closer re-examination of my own online efforts these past few months, I have discovered several pleasantly surprising trends.
Firstly, I am pleased to see that my online writing style is not as “stiff” or formal as much of my offline writing. While I do pride myself in writing as grammatically correct as possible, it appears I may have successfully avoided my traditional overly “scientific” spin by injecting humor and anecdotal stories more frequently than usual. To be honest, I rather enjoy writing for the bloggosphere. It truly enables one to write openly about any subject while still requiring that one pay attention to the quality, conciseness and tone of one’s writing. After all, the entire world is the potential audience, so those traditional writing elements are crucial for delivering a readable blog. I feel as though blogging is more akin to “art”, for example, than other online writing mediums such as Facebook or Web email. The experience of blogging for me could be best described as a hybrid between a great conversation and writing scenes for a short story or screenplay.
Secondly, I am even more pleased to see that my writing as positively affected other readers. I love the comments – please keep them coming! It really fulfills that feeling of “intelligent conversation” I had mentioned earlier. And it creates a sense of pride in me that I had actually written something both meaningful and entertaining for others – even if it’s only in the context of this course.
Hopefully, I have adequately conveyed to everyone reading my blogs a sense of quirkiness, balanced with determined seriousness and a zest for life that is uniquely my own. More importantly, I hope to have made someone smile - maybe even laugh - in the process.
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Yep - me too! Comments and laughing...that's what makes blogging and blog reading enjoyable. I have to say that I always read your blog, every week, and look forward to what you might be saying because it always, always makes me want to write sometihng in response. My blog really sucked this week. I only had about three minutes to prepare it and it shows. After reading your posting (I also wrote about the same topic although quite badly) you made me realize something. I thought that I wrote for me because it was cathartic, but truthfully, my writing is my efforts at communication with others not present in the room with me. I write, like you, for the comments and the laughs.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever had an experience where you were speaking to someone, anyone, and you were into an explanation of dialogue that was somewhat lengthy but necessary to the point and end of the story only to watch the other person lose interest? They may break eye contact, begin to fidget, give the "one moment" finger and even walk away from you, or worse yet, simply interrupt and begin speaking about something completely off topic just to make you quit talking? I have. Iknow everyone has. What I found it by writing these blogs, blog post comments, discussion boards and essays, is that my audience is captive to what I am saying to them - even if only in my own mind. That's why I write. I write for the laughs, and I write for readers comments. I didn't know it, but I do.
Thanks for helping point that out to me.
As always, good post!
Michelle Erickson
Aguilar'sPrideAkitas