Researching Writing Processes Revisited

What starts a writer’s journey and influences their subject material?  One of the most interesting parts of the writing process is how a writer first gains interest in writing.  Another interesting component to add to this is the way a writer’s interest in subject matter also develops.  For instance, R.L. Stine recalls being a shy boy who enjoyed creating magazines on his typewriter and handing them out to his friends at school.  As a kid, Stine was scared of many things, and so it inspired him to start writing horror stories for children.  Since his audience was younger, Stine revealed his rule for writing these stories: “You want to creep them out a little bit, but you don’t really want to terrify them.”  Famous writers are not the only ones who have interesting childhood stories regarding writing.  Jeffery Delviscio, a senior producer at the NY Times describes how “newspapers were nurture at an early age for me.”  Delviscio’s father worked as a writer and editor for a newspaper and would constantly come home smudged with ink and smelling of newspaper.  This eventually led to Delviscio’s own career as a journalist for a newspaper company, except his ink smudges were metaphorical.  Delviscio recalls his early memories of writing and also relates it to the psychology behind why he started to write.  Analyzing my story along with these other writer’s stories, I realized how influential and important childhood is to developing an interest in writing for later on in life.  

When examining what inspires writers to start writing, I noticed that I can connect with these narratives as well.  My first experience with writing started when I was young and found an interest in reading.  Since I enjoyed reading so much, I then became interested in telling my own stories.  My parent bought me a computer game that allowed me to write my own stories and I was able to bring them to life with illustration too.  My parents encouraged my writer’s enthusiasm further by telling me how much they loved to read the stories I wrote.  By the time I was in middle school, I had joined a reading and writing club, where I would read books and summarize them.  I received encouragement from my English teacher at the time, who insisted I had a way with words and should pursue a writing career.  English classes in high school allowed me to construct a stronger writing style and I made me realize how much I enjoyed putting stories together.  Before I had written stories for other people, but now I was writing them for myself.  After this realization, I started to establish what subjects interested me the most in writing.  Technology is one of those subjects that I started to learn about when I was young, but I did not fully start to understand until I was older and in college.  Reading various articles on technology, I became aware of my interest in technology and decided that is where I would like to focus my writing. I can now understand how certain figures and experiences in a writer’s life can shape their storytelling and the subject matter that entices them.  Without my parents, I would have never been the little girl sitting at her computer writing stories, and I would probably have not evolved my interest in writing about technology.  Thinking back, I’m sure that little girl would be excited to learn that she would become a grown woman who is about to obtain her degree in English and is writing her first blog!

When thinking about the writing process now, I not only wonder about subject material, but what the relationship between the reader, writer, and content is?  The reader plays an important part in comprehending material, and this depends on many factors such as their own knowledge and experiences.  A reader needs to be able to connect with the content, to tie their own background in to the story in order to comprehend the information they are receiving.  If a reader is unable to connect with the story, then the writer needs to think about why they are not making this connection.  I used to write for myself and my own interests, but as I have progressed through my writing journey, I have come to understand the processes that are critical to writing.  Proofreading is a great example of an important writing process.  Whenever I read through my work, I find mistakes and sentences that make my work incoherent.  Before I would never proofread because I was more concerned about what I was writing than what the reader was trying to comprehend.  Creating an outline for the topic you are writing about is another important aspect to the process.  Being able to research the topic I am writing about is critical to how I will incorporate information for the reader to comprehend.  Since the message can become lost within writing, it is important to make sure the information being provided is understandable and truthful.  As a writer, it is my responsibility to make sure the content I am providing is shaped in a way that does not lose the reader’s interest. While I have found a writing process that works for me, I only hope to improve my writing process in the future, as well as the way I connect my content to the reader.

https://www.readingrockets.org/books/interviews/stine/transcript

http://tiny.cc/o6d2jz

http://ccsdliteracycurriculumlead.weebly.com/home/text-comprehension-the-relationship-between-reader-author-content