Frady Lady
Blog One: Genre and Technology
Bedford book of genres: chapter 1
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In the first chapter of The Bedford Book of Genres, the authors help their audience obtain a better understanding of genres. A simple view of genres is that they just give us a way to categorize things. For example, music is split up into genres like Country, Pop, or Rap. Movies are categorized by genres like Horror, Romance, or Comedy.
While the first chapter did give the reader this basic understanding of genre, what I found most interesting is how the time-period plays such a big role. Genres can vary based off what materials are available to the author and what genres are popular at the time. An author from the Victorian era wouldn’t be able to post a casual blog post such as this. Technology has helped to create many genres of its own. In my opinion, social media allows everyone to be an author in their own way. You are technically publishing something every time you make a tweet or a Facebook status. Though I hope this generation does not completely lose sight of the old reoccurring genres, I welcome the innovation.
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Revise
Revise
Revise
Revise
When Lamott refers to “the fantasy of the uninitiated”, she’s referring to the picture that readers paint of well renowned authors having flawless first drafts. Many readers, including myself, have built up this image of talented writers always having a flawless first draft. A perfect first draft is typically a figment of the imagination. The second or third drafts are commonly where all the magic happens.
One of my favorite papers that I wrote last semester began much like Lamott described. I really didn’t want to write it so I just sat down and forced myself to type. The paper was to be written on one of my most vivid memories. I began with my senses. I’ve found that the easiest way to be descriptive with memories is to start off with describing everything you saw, heard, tasted, touched, and smelled. But believe me when I say a bunch of senses just thrown onto paper out of order makes a truly shitty first draft. After revising it what I’m sure was way more than three times, I got an A on the paper! Even then, I’m sure there were mistakes. This blog post alone had a couple revisions after my original draft.
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Blog Three: Is Your Work Your Own?
The Brief McGraw-Handbook: Understanding Plagiarism
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Throughout my academic career so far, plagiarism has been something my teachers have always made me very aware of. Even with the constant reminder to not steal other’s work, I still never really understood plagiarism to the full extent. The Brief McGraw-Hill Handbook helped me to understand that there are different forms of plagiarism and ways to avoid it. There’s an appropriate way to paraphrase another author’s material. Plagiarizing can be easy to do accidentally. It’s common for someone to take notes and forget to record the source. You should always take notes, record the page numbers, and use quotations. Recording sources goes hand and hand with having a working bibliography.
Sources can be helpful but it’s never good to rely too much on one source. If you do rely too much on one source, your thoughts might not be your own. A rule of thumb that stuck out to me in the reading was, you can quote up to 50 words from an article and up to 300 from a book without it being deliberate plagiarism. Always read and observe how credible your sources are and reflect on how they interact. This is a good way to compile your thoughts and create your own ideas. The overall idea is that plagiarism is common but illegal and avoidable. If you’re too lazy and plagiarize, there will be consequences.
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" You can quote up to 50 words from an article and up to 300 from a book without it being deliberate plagiarism."
Blog Four: Lobster Considered
Consider the lobster by david foster wallace
Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace could be considered a research paper because of the obvious extensive amount of research put into the article. Wallace eased his audience into considering how aesthetics and morality coincide when considering the lobster. The article began with discussing the Maine Lobster Festival. The introduction of this festival allowed for Wallace to relate personal experience with his genre. His vivid experiences also painted a better picture. The personal experiences were introduced before another topic of research considering the lobster. This helped me to form more of an opinion. His effective use of varying evidence gave me a better idea on how I might structure a research paper in the near future.
While reading this article, I concluded that Wallace and I have very similar beliefs when it comes to consuming animals. I’ve always felt guilty but eaten them anyways. Happily, and selfishly. My brother recently became a vegan and I can honestly say I didn’t understand it until I read this article. I felt like crying when considering the lobster. I believe that the author’s purpose was more to inform than persuade. However, he sure made me not want to eat meat for a while. I don’t like seafood but I’d always been curious about lobster. Now I’m never going to try it. Maybe that was the secret intent of Wallace. Either way, I really enjoyed hearing both sides of considering the lobster. I learned about my position on lobsters, how to structure a research paper, and how to draw in your audience.
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When all you do in your high school classes is get preached to by teachers over the importance of following all the writing rules, it can be easy to lose your sense of creativity.
Structure.
Structure.
Structure.
Try letting
L
O
O
S
E
a little.
Trust the process.
Is it good to have an outline and keep your topic in mind? Absolutely. But don’t allow that to limit your scope of research. Take out a good old-fashioned piece of paper and pencil. Just scribble down whatever comes to mind about the topic and have fun with it. Research can be interesting if you let yourself become immersed in the topic. Think outside of the box and don’t believe that any idea of yours is useless or stupid. Very often, I tend to delete/erase thoughts that seem silly to me. But those silly ideas could be solid points to address with the help of some research.
Freeform writing stood out to me in this chapter because it seemed relevant to my last three blog posts. Putting any ideas that come to mind on paper helps to create the best possible version of a shitty first draft. It gives you more options and allows for you to put some personality into your paper. Jotting down your own ideas before you read others also helps to avoid plagiarism. It is too easy to become absorbed in your research and have other author’s opinions subconsciously become the voice in the back of your mind. Lastly, your silly thoughts could become useful background information or fun facts that keep the reader interested. In Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace, you weren’t always sure how the seemingly random details about lobsters pertained to the main idea of the article. In the conclusion, Wallace tied all his little facts together to form a much larger message. His alternating use of hard evidence and anecdotes kept things light and interesting for his audience. I’m confident that Wallace also jotted down everything he could think of or any questions he might have about lobsters, so that he could make sure to address those points in his article. These are tactics I will be sure to utilize in upcoming research papers.
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Blog five: Free as I'll ever be
Bedford book of genres: chapter 5
Blog Six: Broaden Your Horizons
The Brief McGraw-Handbook: “Finding and Managing Print and Online Sources”
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It’s ideal to have a variety of sources. I didn’t realize how many different categories of sources there were. I always figured sources were either online or in a book. But it goes beyond that. Categories of sources include General reference works, Specialized reference works, books, periodical articles, websites, other online sources, Virtual communities, Government documents, pamphlets, census data, and primary sources. There’s also sources that fall underneath each of those categories. It can seem almost overwhelming but there are ways to narrow the search, such as keyword searches. These allow for you to use keywords to search your chosen data base. Group words together, use Boolean operators, use truncation, and search the fields. The more specific the better.
Concerning my own project, I have not yet gotten into the thick of my research but I found the information in this chapter to be very useful. Knowing how many research options there are push me towards thinking outside of the box. It can be very easy to fall into a research routine and never breach that comfort zone we so naturally form. Using a variety of sources can help to break that barrier. For my project on the Children’s Center I’m volunteering at, I’m going to do my best to not only stick to the web. I’m so used to only using the internet. I feel that this chapter and the research requirements for project two will not only give me the best possible outcome on my paper, but better prepare me for my college career.
Blog Seven: Put it in your own words
The Bedford Book of Genres: “Integrating and Documenting Sources”
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If I were to solely take the surface meaning of Chapter Seven in our handy dandy Bedford Book of Genres, it would be a good guide on how to mechanically cite your references. Someone in need of formal instruction for citations would do themselves a favor by considering this chapter. Instead of focusing on the nitty-gritty and repetitive details that can always be referred to, I focused on a concept mentioned towards the beginning of the chapter, integrating citations. In my personal experience, integrating citations smoothly can be the difference between a C and an A paper.
When writing a research paper, it’s important to express your own viewpoints and not just the viewpoints of the authors that your citing. Everyone needs to start somewhere and it builds credibility to cite other’s research. However, it’s important to tie it back to your own argument. Choppy citations can also become boring for the reader. Get creative! Paraphrasing can be your best friend if you give credit to authors where credit is due. Ironically enough, I didn’t learn much about how to smoothly integrate citations in any of my high school English classes. It wasn’t until I took AP U.S. History that I understood the importance of making a research paper your own. Historical facts can be hard to, “put in your own words.” What I was taught to do, was research the cause and effect of each fact. Once you’ve done that, it’s much easier to connect the dots. Most of the time, trends can be found and that will be the base of the paper. This is similar to the approach I now take on all of my research papers.
Now I’ll connect this approach to our upcoming project two on community and genre. If you were to research the background of your community, the background of that background information, and so on, you might start to be able to connect some dots and better structure your paper. Once the connections have been made, it’s easy to incorporate your own view points. The citations should go smoothly after that because they are simply background to give you a base and make your paper more credible to its audience.
"Citations... are simply background to give you a base and make your paper more credible to its audience."
Blog Eight: Writing Beyond College
The Brief McGraw-Handbook: Chapter 12 p.g 170-185
Instead of boring myself and my readers by discussing yet another chapter full of the mechanical aspects of MLA, I chose a chapter that stood out to me. As I’ve briefly mention in other blog posts, most of my blog posts even, it’s hard to write outside of the box. I found this chapter on writing beyond college to be very helpful, especially with the task of writing project two’s shitty first draft lingering over me like a dark cloud. It has never been hard for me to write creatively. Word’s seem to just flow through me when I’m discussing emotion or personal experiences. When it comes to research papers, I’ve always struggled to find that personal angle. I almost always find myself asking how to dig deeper or how to get excited about research. Chapter Twelve helped me to put some things in perspective.
Address the community. After deciding on a community, ask yourself some questions.
“What do Community members talk about?”
“Who’s an outsider (member of the community), and who is an insider (member of the organization)?”
My personal favorite question that the book proposed was,
“How can you best write from the inside to the outside?”
I sometimes forget how helpful that question can be during the researching process. If you were not to be a member of the community, how would you explain the community to someone who’s not a part of it? This is a great question to keep in mind when writing our next paper. You might have done a lot of background research on a topic and decided not to mention it as a reference. But will your reader still understand what your presenting them with, without the seemingly miniscule tad-bit of information? Probably not.
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Blog Nine: It's the Remixxxx
The Bedford Book of Genres: Chapter Nine
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I do apologize my dear readers,
For I struggled and could not find a way around making this boring, straightforward chapter, an interesting bit of discussion. I did my best to sum up the chapter; make it quick and painless. Not every blog post has to be a lengthy one.
Revising is used when a writer might have gaps in development and logic; usually unclear in purpose. Revision is to fill those gaps and makes things clearer to the audience. Normally revisions are what’s being made when we fix our paper and turn it in for a better grade. It’s all about learning to “reflect critically on your own work.” There is also the option to ask for a peer or teacher to revise your paper for you.
Remixing relates more to our upcoming project number three. Remixing is all about taking a topic you’ve already researched and mixing it into a different genre. If I’m not mistaken, I think this could be the same case for the term “remix” in music. Musicians can take songs from all different genres then mix it into one song with the same beat and sound. If you’ve ever been to a club, you should be able to acknowledge that a DJ can mix everything from early Taylor Swift to Earth Wind and Fire into one run. Our task concerning remixing includes mixing our community from Project Two into three different genres for project Two.
Blog Ten: The Twitter Market
Analyzing Visual Rhetoric
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To spare you the fancy lingo; the long story short is that viral marketing is a social media tool to get consumers to want a product. Not only want but need and as fast as possible. The first thing that comes to my girly oriented mind of societal image is Twitter. Almost every frequent tweeter knows that twitter is all about relating to others and feeling understood. I almost always log on to re-tweet either relate-able quotes on how I’m feeling or what I aspire to have. Aspirations usually include life goals for the future, like what you want in a relationship, places you want to visit, or things you want to own. When it comes to things you want to own, that is what I see the most of on my twitter feed. This is where the viral marketing comes into play.
Suppliers make a point to see what’s trending. Take the Kardashians for example. Suppliers see that Kim K gets a zillion likes on a picture of her wearing a corset over an obnoxiously over-sized holy T-shirt, with thigh high black velvet boots, and a diamond choker. Within a day I saw millions of re-tweets on brands selling thick crystal chokers and suede thigh high boots. I walked into Urban Outfitters a week after and couldn’t find a shirt without tiny holes on the shoulder. Viral marketing can be linked with supply and demand as well as society’s image.
Blog Eleven: That's all Folks
The Bedford Book of Genres: Chapter Ten
Endings are usually so bitter-sweet. If it’s a happy ending the ending is never enough; you always long to know more. If it’s a sad ending, you’re left with an unsatisfied feeling. But seeing as this last blog post has to be on yet another boring chapter of the book BBG that we loathe, Hallelujah! Am I right?! It’s impossible to feel unsatisfied with putting that book to rest… or on EBay.
Any who, chapter ten. The possibilities of the multigenre project. Multigenre projects go a step beyond research papers by opening unlimited possibilities and formats to convey your points. They offer you a chance to connect with your audience beyond the classroom; much like project three.
Long story short, ask yourself what the best way to reach your audience is. Would it be through social media? T-shirts? A website maybe? Whatever the case, those are the genres you might consider narrowing in on for your project three. To be successful it’s important to know your audience. Just like consumers know how to reach their goal audience, we must do the same.
On that note, I must bid you farewell my dear readers. I hope you’ve enjoyed the good, the bad, and the ugly. Happy readings.
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