Beth Towle LITERACY REFLECTION: POSSIBILITIES

 Guiding Questions:  How has my writing process changed over time?  What is my writing process now?  How does my writing process compare to others?  What technologies do I use in my process?  Do I use a different process depending on what I’m writing #1: PROCESS

 1. Ideas  2. Research  3. Ideas/Research  4. Rough Draft  5. Rewrite  Research?  Feedback?  6. Final Draft  Ideas – Paper or Phone  Research – Online or Paper/Book  Notes – Paper, then typed in Word  Outlining – Word  Writing - Word #1: PROCESS

 Possible conclusions:  My writing process is recursive, meaning it often repeats steps throughout and steps constantly feed into each other.  Not a linear process.  Multi-modal process.  Messy process  Not as detailed or as revision-based as other people’s.  What else:  How does this compare to the past, when I did not have access to computers or internet? How does that effect what I do now?  Why is this the process I use? What is hard or easy about it? How should it evolve in the future? #1: PROCESS

 Guiding Questions:  What audiences do I generally write for?  How does what I’m writing affect my audience decisions?  What considerations do I take into account about my audience?  What might be my audience’s possible reactions to my work?  Who is my “dream” audience?  In what ways is an editor a type of audience?  What is the difference between my internet audience, my academic audience, and my poetry audience? #2: WRITING FOR AN AUDIENCE

 What venues do I write for? Who is their audience?  Poetry – people who like and enjoy poetry, people interested in history, teachers, writer friends, myself  Fan fiction – other fans, friends, myself  Twitter – other writers, small presses or blogs (networking), friends  Poetry reviews – poetry readers and writers, other small presses, other poetry blogs, myself  Pop culture essays – fans of those media products, other pop culture writers, friends, people interested in cultural issues, myself  First-Generation PhD Blog – other graduate students, undergrads interested in become grad students, people interested in rhet/comp field, friends, teachers, myself  Rhet/Comp Papers – people interested in the field of rhet/comp, people interested in my subfield, publication reviewers or conference participants, faculty, classmates, etc. #2 WRITING FOR AN AUDIENCE

 Possible Conclusions:  I am always one of my own audience members.  I write for many different venues, each with a unique audience.  What I write depends on what I want an audience to get out of it.  I write based on how I want people to “look at me,” how I present myself to different public groups.  Some of these involve an in-between party: editor, reviewers, teacher, etc. #2: WRITING FOR AN AUDIENCE

 Guiding Questions:  Who are the people who have helped me gain literacy skills?  Why did those people help me?  How exactly did they help me?  What are the institutions/organizations that have helped me gain literacy skills?  What do they gain out of my literacy? What do I gain from learning literacy from them?  What are the power dynamics in my literacy acquistion?  What technologies have affected my literacy? Are those sponsors?  How can I relate this to Deborah Brandt’s “Sponsors of Literacy” article? #3: SPONSORS OF LITERACY

 People:  Grandfather – helped me learn to read, was passionate about reading, was a writer and printer.  Mother – artist, showed me how to read and write creatively  Mrs. Wiegand – taught me that writing could be fun and open  Mr. Hernandez – helped make me a better writer in multiple genres  Dr. Heithaus – made me into a poet  Judy Blume – first writer I ever loved  Theodore Roethke – showed me how to be a “Midwestern poet”  Institutions:  Public school – taught me to read and write; benefited from my high test scores and helped to prevent “Indiana brain drain.”  College – made me a better reader/writer/thinker; benefited from my later reputation, from my tuition money, etc.  Jobs – made me a more skilled writer or teacher; benefited from my labor, my time, and various writing projects to use in the future #3: SPONSORS OF LITERACY

 Technologies:  Pen/paper  Phone  Social media  Blogging platforms  Kindle  Computers  Internet  Audio equipment  Other:  Socioeconomic difficulties in childhood  Public library  Writing communities  Online communities  Fandoms/Media #3: SPONSORS OF LITERACY

 Possible Conclusions:  My literacy has been affected by many different people, institutions, technologies, and power structures.  The way I grew up is perhaps the single biggest influence on my literacy.  College and graduate school has greatly changed my literacy and how I think of it.  Teachers have been an incredibly important part of my literate life.  My literacy acquisition is unique, although it shares common features with the literacy acquisition of others.  Technologies have changed the way I’ve learned literacy AND how others have taught me literacy skills.  I believe that one’s place in larger institutional or social structures greatly affects their literacy. #3: SPONSORS OF LITERACY

 What major skills or events have contributed to your abilities to read, write, and understand different modes of communication?  Can you think of any genres that are particularly meaningful for you?  How has technology impacted these processes for you?  What readings or ideas discussed in class could be applied to your own experiences with communication?  How have all of these different moments, processes, and ideas merged and built upon one another in order to produce you as a reader, writer, and communicator? QUESTIONS TO GUIDE YOUR REFLECTIONS