My Blog about Blogs

               The prompt for this response had multiply questions to think about, but I have chosen to focus on the ones that seem to make me think the most: Have blogs served their time? Do I see a purpose for blogging in my own writing/career?

                My perception of bloggers is that they are the people who need attention the most in the world. They want to send their thoughts and ideas out into the World Wide Web for others to see. I am not sure when blogging started, and I am not too sure I even care to know. But one thing I do know is the time of the blog has yet to pass. For some reason people are attracted to blogs in the same way everyone has to stare at a car crash on the high way … you just can’t look away! In my mind blogs are recently taking off. Look at our class for example, we are writing a blog instead of a typed or hand written essay to turn in. The first blog that I had ever written was for school while I was Rome (we had to keep blogs for a class). I found it weird and quit awkward that I was blogging about what I had done that day, considering my above description of who bloggers are.

                But when we look at the purpose of the blog, “the spontaneous expression of instant thought” (Sullivan), to me, it’s obvious that the time of blog is far from over.  Everyday people blog about nonsense, unless you follow someone specific, but the reasons for why people blog are different, right? I am not so sure. I think that all people essentially blog for the same purpose: to get their voice out there. Whether it’s a good or bad voice doesn’t matter because blogging according to Sullivan is, in many ways, writing out loud. I think that people today are so caught up with themselves that blogging will be here for a while.

                As for me, like I said before, I do not blog unless I am getting graded on it, and I do not plan on starting a blog in the near future. However, I do think that our generation will encounter blogging and other types of social media within our jobs. It is quit obvious that technology plays a huge role in the world today and everything from museums to television shows utilize blogs, twitter, and Facebook as a way to access a wider, and generally a younger audience. I know that where I work, Stan Hywett Hall and Gardens use all of these social media outlets to get information out and to emphasize special events.

                Even though I do not want to continue by blog career after this semester, I think that I might have to in my career. I guess I can put on a good face to get the job done, at least then I will be getting paid to blog. As for personal usage, blogs have no meaning to me. I have no need to throw my thoughts and ideas out there for the whole world to see, because it is usually my big mouth that gets me into trouble most of the time.

Blue Desert and Visions of American: Creative Non-Fiction

Creative Non-Fiction … well, that sounds a little contradictory to me. Mainly because as a history major we are taught to stick to the facts, be specific, and be compelling. Because this has been pounded into my head for the last 3 ½ years, I will say that I am not a creative writer. In fact, I take pride in my amazing historical researching abilities and the awesome way in which I take my resources and create my essays or research projects. Now, do not confuse me not being creative with me saying that I am dull or not a fun person to be around. Rather, I think that being a creative non-fiction writer means being able to create awesome metaphors and embellishments that make the mundane extraordinary and interesting.

Before reading the excerpts from Blue Desert and Visions of America, my idea of what kind of characteristics this genre encompassed remained the same as after I had read them. According to Lee Gutkind, one of the creators of the genre, there is certain criterion that makes non-fiction, creative non-fiction. Both of these stories that we read were of personal experiences of the authors. They had taken time to isolate themselves from what most of us would call society and write, in a creative way, how they lived and dealt with the struggles in their respective settings.

I think the most important characteristic that both stories have is the ability of the authors to acknowledge a situation and to make it compelling for the reader. Each of these could have been written just as straight facts or thoughts. But what is the fun in that? People want to be entertained and the genre of creative non-fiction allows people to understand the facts of a problem or circumstances, while being entertained by the author.

For me, the most enjoyable to read was Blue Desert. I know, most of you probably thought I would choose Visions of America because of my major. But let me explain … I LOVED reading about how Charles Bowden wanted to cross the border as if he were a Mexican. This has nothing to do with my personal position on illegal immigrants or anything like that. Rather, I liked it because he was taking a contemporary issue and creating an interesting outlook that was inspired by his own creativity.

“Nobody pays much attention to the summer sport. The players are nameless and constantly changing and so there is little identification with them or with their skills and defeats. And the players are brown and this earns them a certain contempt and makes attraction difficult to sell to spectators" (Bowden 151). Bowden took border hopping and instead of making it about right or wrong, he focused on their experience and in turn decided to recreate their plight. As we read, he takes us along on his “Mexican” experience. Whether we like it or not, we now have a different outlook on a situation based off of this creative non-fiction author.

Although I feel as if I will never be a creative writer, I think that these two examples of the genre show us that people who dabble in this kind of work are poetic geniuses. They take their personal experiences, no matter how dull, and create not only entertaining, but also informative essays, articles, and books.

Navigating Genres -- Do Genres Matter?

I think that it is safe to say that most people do not use the term genre unless they are referring to music or movies. In the field of composition however, understanding the term genre and how it affects the ultimate goal of a composition is important. In the article Navigating Genres, written by Kerry Kirk, many examples and definitions are used to describe the evolution and ways in which genres are used to create different types of compositions. According to Kirk, the word genre used to have a bad reputation, because it simply meant that writing was nothing more than a process of filling in the blanks depending on the genre. However, today that reputation does not seem to stick with most genre theorists.

According to Carolyn R. Miller, an English professor at North Carolina State University, genres are used in our everyday lives. Kirk uses Miller’s definition to describe how the modern description of genre can change not only our perception of what the word genre means, but also how to utilize different genres to our advantage.  Making it easier for us to understand, Kirk explains that “by studying genres that we find familiar, we can start to see how specific choices that writers make result in specific actions on the part of the readers.” He continues that “it only follows that our own writing must too be purposefully written.”

 Everything that we write or read follows a type of genre that was used to create a specific action on the part of the reader. For us students studying composition, this is important to recognize. Examples given in Miller’s explanation of genre include letters of recommendation, a user manual, progress report, ransom note, or lecture. All of these follow a certain type of genre and it is easy to see what kind of specific action the reader should have. With these as examples, it is easy to see that by using specific genres we evoke specific actions from our readers.

This brings me to the question, do genres matter? Before reading the article Navigating Genres, I would have said no. I would have continued to think that the word genre was meant only for movies and music. However, as Miller stated, and I agree, genres are in our everyday lives. They are important because they allow a writer to understand how to write a specific composition. Also, genres help us to create compositions that arouse a response from our reader. Understanding genres is about understanding a composition as a whole and recognizing how they function rhetorically. It is much more than just filling in the blanks.