Yiruma - River Flows In You

Music while I'm writing.
Music is my inspiration and motivation. When I feel empty, sad or out of words, music always bring me up. It's like different kind of music gives me different kinds of ideas and input. When writing this blog-post right now I have my favorite pianist, Yiruma, in the background. When I'm writing papers for my class here at college, I usually need positive melodies and music that makes me happy.

Do music have an impact on your thinking or writing? If so, what kind of music do you listen to?

Make A Mind-Map

Do you feel empty or stuck before starting you paper? My little advice for you, if you want to have a little structure before you start writing, is to make a mind-map. This is probably the only advice about writing I feel comfortable about showing you, because I have experienced my self that it works. I learned how to use a mind-map on high school. What I do is writing down my main topic in the middle of a paper, then write down key-words around the topic with lines in between. This helps me getting a better overview and to see what my text will contain. It is much easier to start a paragraph if I can look at my mind-map and pick out what looks the best.

A concept which is much alike my mind-map is to make outlines. I started practising this concept when I came here. My classmates in English represented this expression for me, and the purpose is much like the purpose of the mind-map. When making outlines, all the ideas about the topics is charted down, except this setup is more like a step-by-step or paragraph to paragraph guideline.  

What is your routine before you start to write a paper? Have you tried making a mind-map before?

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Recursivness

Have you heard about the word recursiveness? Rucursiveness was not a common word in my world. Having to understand the meaning of this word, I have also had the opportunity to use it in multiple contexts. Recursiveness, or retrospective structuring, is a structured way of looking back on what you have already written in order to go forward and discover more of what you have to say. In my previous project in my English class I looked at this expression as something that interrupted my writing. I explained it as a bad habit and how I self-judge my writing way to much. Turned out I was wrong. It can be good to look back on my writing, not to fall out, and to be able to look further on.

Sondra Perl, which I wrote about in a previous post, did a research on a guy named Tony. Turned out that recursiveness helped Tony in his writing as well. When he was aware of what he was writing, it was easier for him to look forward and to write more. So think about that, if you get stuck, or lose the grip of your text, try to look back and figure out what you were going to tell in the beginning.  

Are you recursive? Do you think that helps you to write a better paper? 

Games and the power of words.

Word-games are fun, at least if you know the language. You feel kind of lost when you're sitting there playing and don't know any of the word or can't come up with anything. I felt at least lost in this situation. Some days ago we decided to play scrabble and another card game called "Cards Against Humanity." The purpose of this game is to collect words and phrases from different cards which sound the best. I must mention that this game is not politically- or morally-correct. The idea is to insult and make fun of social society problems, important people and to put things on the edge. As rude as it sounds, this turned out to be one of the best games I have ever played. In the beginning I was sitting there like a question mark. "What does that word mean?", "what is the meaning with that sentence?" and "why is that so hilarious?" After a while I got a better understanding, and I taught a lot of new words, which will come to my advantage. I will definitely play this game again to have a good laugh and to extend my vocabulary.



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Unskilled Writers

Am I an unskilled writer? Right away I would respond "yes" to this question. But what is an unskilled writer? Sondra Perl, the author of "The composing processes of unskilled college writers", tried to create an objective system to describe what writers were doing when they were writing. To me it means that you are not a natural writer. Mostly because the literary skills are probably not fully developed and unskilled writers struggle with everything from structure, organization and flow. What made Perl the most significant researcher on this field was that she actually studied a group of people who struggled with writing. Previous researchers had studied people who were already proficient writers. Perl understood that it's better to take hold of those already struggling with writing processes, to find out what lies behind to be an unskilled writer. That makes more sense to me.

Some researchers refers to unskilled writers as beginners. Perl does not like this label, and her findings in the study argues against seeing her research students as beginners. It ought to not necessarily imply that they are proficient writers. I will say GO Perl, I am not a perfect writer, but I'm not a beginner on the field either. I have a way to go to become a good writer. The more I write, the better I will be, hopefully. Some strategies I use, which I'm not going to write too much about right now is, to write as many drafts as I need, write whatever sounds good at that moment, correcting my grammar in the end the paper, making a mind-map, get other people to read my drafts and focus on my audience and the purpose of my paper.

Do you see yourself as an unskilled writer? And what is your opinion about that term?

Rhetoric

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In my previous post I wrote about making my audience understand my writing. This can be set in context of rhetoric. This is a concept I learned about in high school. Rhetoric is about seizing and connects with the audience, whether it is in writing or speaking. In Rhetoric we can look at a triangle called the Rhetorical Triangle. Here we have three factors working together; Ethos, pathos and logos. When these three are working together the rhetoric works best. You use your language to communicate something, to impress or persuade in an effective manner (ethos). Pathos is the audience you want to connect with in maybe an emotional way, or in a way that makes the audience recognize themselves or make them achieve something. Logos is all the information and content in the message or text. 

My way of connecting with my audience, in this blog, is by using pictures and to allow myself to write heuristic and unrestrained. I have chosen the pictures so that you as a reader get a better understanding of what the post will contain. I also believe it's more entertaining to look at pictures between the reading to get a little break from all the black and white. That's at least what I prefer. 

If you are writing a blog, how do you try to connect with your readers? 

What I really do...

This picture speaks for itself and describes me well. When I sit down to write a paper, and brag about it to all my friends on facebook or tell my mom how clever i will be. I usually start with good cheer, but always end up doing everything else. Usually I start by opening the news, followed by facebook, and when all of the news and statuses are read, I open a couple of regular blogs. From time to time I open my document, write a few sentences and turn on my music. This is actually pretty frustrating. I am sitting there, complaining and whining because I can't concentrate about my my paper. It would be so much better if all my assignments were math or chemistry related. I like algorithm. Fancy word? I know. This is an expression I learned about in my English class that also expanded my vocabulary.  They are "precise rules that will always result in a specific answer if applied to an appropriate problem." (Rose, 239) Algorithm can for instance be a mathematical problem, or in relation to statistics and research reports. Algorithms are the opposite of heuristics.

Even though I like math better than writing, heuristics is what I prefer in writing. You maybe ask yourself, "What does heuristic means?" Heuristic writing means that there are fewer rules to follow. You get to write in a way that makes you investigate and discover more about your own knowledge. Mike Rose, made an analysis of writer's block, and he describes heuristics as, "rules of thumb" and "guidelines that allow varying degrees of flexibility when approaching problems." He also says that, "a heuristic does not guarantee the optimal solution or, indeed, any solution at all; rather, heuristics offer solutions that are good enough most of the time."  I think of heuristic writing as free-writing. I can compare heuristic to this blog, where I allow my self to write unrestrained and creatively

Grammar and punctuation.

When you read and look at some words, they look so alike but they still have completely different meanings. I guess you know what i mean. Take for instance the words "to" and "too", I didn't know the difference before some days ago when a tutor taught me. To put them in context; "I am running too fast for you to catch up", "I ate too much food" or "to be or not to be." When to use apostrophes can also be confusing. I have one example. When you write, "You're my friend" you have shortened down the two words "you are". If I am in a hurry when writing, I sometimes write "your" instead of "you're". The word "Your" means "ownership" and that something is yours and not that 'someone are' anything. 

There are also a lot of words I can't pronounce correctly. Take for instance beer and bear, hair, hear and here. I can't hear it myself but I am probably pronouncing it wrong, since I always get corrected. Will I ever learn?  

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An Eternal Struggle

An eternal struggle. Yes, that's what i feel when I get a new assignment and I need to put my thoughts down on paper. Writing a paper requires a lot of time, interest, understanding and creativity. You need to organize all of your thoughts and get them into a structured form. Everything I think sounds so much better in my head than it looks on the paper. I know what I am thinking, the trick is to write it in a way that makes other people understand me. 

But I do not fear, it's usually not an eternal struggle. There happens to be some solutions, even for me. Sondra Perl argues that, "it's a good thing when people don't wait to write until they know everything they want to say" - rather, she wants writers to use the clarifying power of the act of writing itself to help them figure out what they want to say. (Perl,  ) This is actually one of the best tips I have received in relation to writing. It is more helpful to have three messy pages with scrabbling, than to have nothing at all. In my English class, we also read about a women called Anne Lamott, the author of "Shitty First Drafts". She argued that, "very few writers know what they are doing until they've done it". (Lamott, 301) Something tells me that Perl and Lament have a lot in common. For my first assignment in college, I handed in four drafts. I think I could have handed in even more drafts because every new draft became better than the previous one. So I agree with both Perl and Lamott, just write, don't sit there like I've been doing with this post for about an hour.

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Being an international student

Being a Norwegian-speaking student in America, requires the little extra at school. In only 8 weeks my language has developed and gotten much better. That is mostly because of my English teacher and English class that I am taking. This class has really come to my advantage, and I have learned a lot these past weeks. We have been through topics that have been very important for my situation. These topics made ​​it possible for me to improve my self as a writer.

All the topics we have been through have been related to writing. I don't think I'm overreacting if I said that everyone in my class have learned a lot about us self as writers and about techniques that is helpful for us. One reading we did which I really liked was about a girl named Sotomayor. She was an Puerto Rican minority in America with Spanish as her native language. She struggled through college because of her language challenges, but achieved her goals and overcome the language challenge based on hard work and determination. This reading gave me motivation and made realise I can achieve the same if I work hard enough.

LIfe before college

Before I started college, my life was adventure-filled and without any worries. I lived my spontaneous life, hang out with friends and travelled around. I also had a job, I lived with my girlfriend and went to the army for one year. Three years after high school I figured out that I needed to become more. I had to develop myself as a person. Personally I think intelligence is attractive, which may sounds very superior and superficial, but I want this biology degree so I can work with what I cherish most in life, animals and nature. One day I will become an adventurous, intelligent Zoologist. 

I am a girl who like new environments and new challenges. I didn't want to study in Norway, I wanted to step outside my comfort zone and experience more of the world. A new country with new culture and different people, no problem; but the language, that's a challenge for me. I know I have to work hard, and in the long term it will serve me well having this background.