Although I joined this UWP course nearly halfway through the quarter, I can`t fail to acknowledge the significant impact it has on a persons writing ability. Apart from just equipping me with skills and a broader understanding of various aspects of writing, this class has inspired me to envision my writing career from a broader spectrum. The TKE essay, for example, was a significant takeaway. It gave me a better understanding of psychological preparation as a significant part of the writing process. From this essay, I learned that before coming up with any piece of writing, one ought to understand their intended audience and think about what the audiences already know or think about the topic to be written about.
One does not just wake up and start writing. A person needs to develop a purpose that aligns with an informed understanding of the expected audience. On the other hand, this purpose has to preceded by a plan of which an action is initiated in to accomplish the goal developed alongside the purpose. This type of view is my new approach to writing. In addition, the assignment also gave me a real-world understanding in how it has a relationship to perceptions and framing. This includes taking advantage of cognitive bias to frame essential aspects of writing such as the development of titles, insertion of captions and the development of effective audience communication. With all these, I started approaching writing from the perspective of reaching the audience instead of just passing and conveying a message across.
As anyone in the audience category would argue, people don`t just read everything that comes their way. They go for the most captivating titles, most interesting stories, and etc. By taking part in the writing class, however, I got a better idea of important aspects in the corporate writing world such as sales and marketing, brand analysis and market segmentation that are important in making writing more appealing to the audience. Also considering that I am well endowed with audience analysis skills learned during the TKE essay, I feel this can give me a competitive advantage in the hostile professional environment.
The profile essay assignment proved to be quite a challenge for myself. Because of only having considerations and not full demand of interests in the market that my interviewee was employed in. I found the assignment quite unsatisfying. However, I enjoyed the opportunity to interview someone on the rationale for their employment experience. A little irrelevant from my progression as a writer, the interview shaped my internal mindset. It reminded me of the saying “if you want to be a fisherman, you have to surround yourselves with fishermen.” This implies that an aspiring professional can best develop by surrounding himself with professionals who have already made it or are aspiring to be in the industry. As a result, my analogy of audience development was significantly improved. As an aspiring professional, I have to get a good understanding of different types of audiences and learn from other prominent individuals. This implies that I have to interact with people from different backgrounds. In sum, interacting with others can be a good starting point for understanding an audiences expectations .
From my experience with my two articles, I can confirm that my writing approach has significantly changed. I no longer need to write whatever feels right to me but what my audience will appreciate. This implies that all my ideas ought to be shaped in a manner that will appeal to my target audience, failure to which my work will be just another helpless message. More so, I have also realized that audience targeting is key in any writing. Selling a specific idea is more advantageous to writing on a broad general topic. For this reason, I foresee myself combining research-based information with creativity to come up with writings that are both entertaining and appealing. More so, the writing also helped realize that the best approach to brand development is being unique.
For my writing, I can best achieve such by coming up with a specific and unique topic that will leave the audience to read more. Overall course gave me an intensive understanding of and from the genre analysis tasks. When discussing the T.S Eliot poem, for example, I got a better understanding of the use of rhetorical moves and their application in poetry. Since then, I need very little effort to realize temporary achievements, opening statements; evidence-based writing or similar rhetorical moves in any piece of literature.
On the brighter side, the understanding from Genre Analysis assignment ignited my desire for writing a script or in participation in screenwriting. As a young child, I dealt with numerous adversities ranging from being a victim of crime from a shooting, to having an abusive father from whom later left before my teenage years. Being exposed to violence at a young age inflicted me to make mistakes and take misguided actions that negatively affected my life as an adolescent. Despite all of these having humor, artistic abilities, and poetry were significant parts of my life. They helped me maintain sanity in my troublesome life while growing up. Although I haven`t been a fan or in particularly skilled in academic writing, the knowledge of rhetorical modes has made me realize how I can pen down my story into a meaningful script. My past life sometimes drew me closer to a hell on earth, this courses material can be utilized in the previous stated skills to accumulate progression in hopefully one day accomplishing a dream.