Empoword

General Introduction xlix For instance, the subject of the story of your weekend might change when you’re telling your grandma instead of your friends. Your language will change as your audience changes: if you’re writing a story about giraffes for a classroom of third graders, you’d better use different word choice than if you’re writing a meta-analysis of giraffe population metrics for the Executive Board of the Oregon Zoo. 12 Similarly, you can imagine that writing a blog about standardized testing would be different in 2003 from the same writing in 2017. Throughout this book, I encourage you to think critically about these rhetorical situations because there is no one version of “good writing.” There is only rhetoric that is effective in its situation. Any such rhetoric is crafted through process. Writing as Process Good writing is a lot of different things, and those things are largely dependent on rhetorical situation. But how exactly do we produce effective, situationally appropriate writing with an always-moving target? The answer lies in the difference between writing as product and writing as process. The word “writing” itself can be both a noun and a verb: a piece of writing, or the act of write-ing. Although your process will eventually lead to a product, I emphasize awareness of process to more deliberately think through the techniques and ideas that you encounter leading up to that final product in that specific situation. Take a few minutes to think about your own writing process. From the moment a writing project is assigned to the moment you turn the paper in and wash your hands of it completely, what happens? What are the ingredients you’ve found necessary to a successful recipe, so to speak? Your answer might include the things you see on posters in high school English classrooms—pre-write, research, draft, revise, etc. —but it also likely includes some other factors— procrastination, dance breaks, coffee, existential dread, snacks, etc. You should especially account for the things that make your process unique. One great example is your environment: some writers prefer silence in the library; others listen to music at their desk; still others like working in a coffee shop with conversational hum in the background. As you challenge yourself with new writing experiences, experiment with your process. By this point in your academic career, you’ve probably already found something that works pretty well for you, and you should give yourself credit for that. But it doesn’t mean you can’t enhance “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” - Ursula K. Le Guin