Mohammed Islam

Theory of Writing

My Journey as a Student Writer

My journey as a student writer began once I learned to put words together and form ideas in complete sentences. I have always viewed writing as a method to document what someone is saying. Like a book would be a speech of what the author said. Writing to me was just a different aspect of a language like reading and speaking is. As a child I never really liked writing, I just did it for school because I had to. I always liked speaking my ideas because writing to me was a very tedious task. Speaking was more natural, and writing was more professional. Whatever you write is “official”, so you had to write at the best of your ability because the reader only has the words you put on a paper to understand your idea. That’s why I never liked writing, because I feel a lot more comfortable expressing my ideas in words. When having to put it on paper you have to worry about so many things like grammar, spelling, and organization.

As a child in my early years of education, my writing would be similar to my stream of consciousness. I wrote as I thought, and this created problems for me. My writing would be unclear, not focused, and unorganized. I thought I would never be able to write effectively in a way where people can understand what I am saying. As I went into middle school, this idea of writing became clearer to me. This is where my theory of writing was first developed, however, it was just my personal idea of what writing is, it never had a fancy name like it does now. I viewed writing as a form of communication that was effective for certain settings. For example, writing would be effective to send letters or post online for many to view. Speaking would be more effective when trying to express your ideas to people in a room.

In high school, I started to do more writing as my classes required it. I learned new techniques to organize my writing and make it better. I learned structures for essays, letters, social media posts, and even emails. For example, for a basic essay we should have an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Then I started to notice certain key factors that are in many genres of writing. This is when I viewed all and any writing that I did to be completed like an assignment, and this is what helped me enhance my writing skills and helped express my ideas in writing in an organized manner. I thought about “what is the purpose of this writing?”, and “how can I make it so my reader understands?” Most of my writing was done in school for assignments. I started to take closer looks at the instructions. I think of writing as an answer to a question. This is because many of my writing assignments had questions that needed to be answered in essay form.

When entering my first semester as a college student I had a reasonable theory of writing. However, this Freshman Composition class has really added to my theory of writing. When starting this class, I believed writing was a form of communication and another aspect of a language like reading and speaking is. I believed writing is the question to an answer. Writing is a lot more than what can expressed in words. As I progressed in this class, I have understood what key factors contribute to an effective piece for writing. What I learned is like a secret ingredient that makes a work of writing a good one. We have identified these key factors by completing rhetorical analysis of multiple writings. In class we looked at different works of art such as letters, essays, reviews, and even pictures. We analyzed what the rhetorical situation was of these compositions. We further analyzed what techniques were effective and what affect they had on the piece. Key factors into a piece of writing are genre, audience, purpose, and stance. These items play a huge role in a piece of writing. These items also helped form my current theory of writing.

Genre, audience, purpose and stance all work together to formulate what I think is an effective writing piece. When writing, you should acknowledge your audience to make sure what your writing is appropriate for them. Your purpose is the reason why you are writing and what are you trying to get out of this writing. Stance is where you stand on whatever topic you’re writing about. Genre tells you what style you are writing in and rules you should abide by when composing. These pillars were what helped me make my composition of two genres. We needed to understand whom it is we are addressing, what was the purpose of the composition and what rules to follow from what genre we chose.

When composing a writing piece, I personally need to be relaxed. I need to be in a comfortable area because it allows my brain to produce creative ideas and thoughts. I like writing down these thoughts as they come to my mind then arrange them in a logical order. I like following a mini plan that I create. I break it up by sections such as introduction, reason 1, reason 2, …, conclusion. Under each section I write bullet points of what ideas, opinions, or facts that I’d like to present in that section. Then I turn the bullet points into sentences. An effective way I found to help your reader understand your rationale is by taking the reader through your train of thought.

Now I wouldn’t say my theory of writing is complete. There is always more to learn about writing and as I grow so will my theory of writing. My theory of writing is that writing is form of communication that can be done effectively when identifying the purpose, audience, stance, and genre of your composition. These are the backbones of any writing. To be a good writer you need to be creative in the way you use your words because after your audience reads your writing, the rest is up to their own interpretation. Writing is more than just the words on the paper, writing is a work of art.