Crafting this piece and going through this process was quite the journey.

 

My original piece that I chose to experiment on was a Facebook post. This posed challenges in itself, since it was a significantly shorter piece at only a paragraph long. I had to expand greatly on the emotions I felt the night of the election. I remembered the underlying feelings I had that night and capitalized on them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The three pieces I drafted were an opinion editorial, a journal entry, and a ghost story. Each of these genres posed their own set of challenges, and each was quite different than the other. Although I decided to not flesh out the journal entries or the ghost story, the drafts led me to critically think about the content of my writing.

 

Journal entries are more intimate than other genres. In this type of writing, you are writing essentially for one main audience: yourself. Although others could eventually read it, the importance of writing this genre is to document your thoughts and feelings in one place. This is my favorite part of writing. This type of writing is great for self-reflection and awareness as well. Journaling lets me document my true, raw feelings without the worry of judgement. As I journal quite a bit in my free time, I really appreciate the value journaling can bring to constructing thoughtful opinions. Writing about the election in an introspective, intimate way was therapeutic in its own way. 

 

When deciding the next genre to write in, I knew I wanted to challenge myself. A ghost story was a unique way to describe the horror I felt the night of the election. Writing fiction is so much more different than traditional academic writing, and I found myself at crossroads many times throughout the process. Figuring out characters, the setting, and the plot was difficult, and I noticed myself hitting the backspace key continuously as I was writing the piece. It was hard to decide on key parts of the story when I had full autonomy. At some point while writing this piece, I realized that if I keep mulling over the details initially, I will never craft my overarching story. Although the details make up the story, I decided to write in a top-down approach and craft details in later stages of my draft process. Overall, I enjoyed the challenge of writing fiction, however, as it required me to use a different skill set than I had previously. 

 

The first experiment, the opinion editorial, ended up being the one I fleshed out. Writing an opinion editorial piece is a lot like having a discussion, except the others in this conversation are anyone that decides to spend some time reading your piece. Nonetheless, you are free to speak your mind and give your take on an issue. It is important to make sure your point of view and opinions are backed up by experiences and sources. My favorite part about writing in this genre was definitely being able to craft my findings and own experiences into a larger picture. Connecting a variety of notions to central story was different than other academic writing I had done in the past. Using this platform, I decided to explore the importance of discussion from both sides of the political spectrum. I wrote this piece to highlight the importance of talking about our differences with those that are different from us. Having difficult conversations is imperative for there to ever be progress on the political front. We can be better, but it starts with understanding one another and listening.

 

Throughout this process, I was faced with challenges that led me to understand my purpose as a writer and cultivate my mission with my piece. I realized what story I wanted to tell, and it was not the same one that I thought I was going to tell. Initially I had planned on writing an opinion piece about the impacts the Trump Administration had made on my life and my identity. However, as I began to collect data and synthesize my thoughts, I realized there was a bigger issue at hand. There have been countless stories that just seem to echo one another on how the Trump Administration negatively affected their authors' lives, but they all were usually read by the same types of people: left leaning or liberal individuals. Over time, we continued to augment our voices to people who already agreed with us. We kept saying our beliefs to those who agreed with us, and we felt satisfaction each time someone agreed with us, so we continued to do it. And while this was still important to do to educate one another, it did not fix or change anything. Instead, it led to shock and disappointment. 

 

When I realized this during the drafting process, I shifted the purpose of my writing from focusing on my identity to how all people, regardless of background or identity, should listen and discuss these important issues. It was a path I was not expecting to go down with my writing. In fact ever since I was a little girl, I remember being told my parents: "The two things you should never argue or discuss are religion and politics." But now, I firmly believe it is time to change the latter. Through the drafting processes and peer edits, I slowly realized the imminence of these issues. We need to discuss these issues because every day another group of people is attacked by an administration that was elected based on lies. It is imperative that we educate each other one on these pervasive issues that plague so many groups as each day passes. If we do not try to make change now, then when? If not us, who?

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Although my story may have changed, my audience still includes left-leaning college students, but it also includes students that are willing to listen to opinions that are different than their own. I struggled to write this piece in a way that could include readers that are so different than myself. It is hard to write to include a perspective that is the polar opposite of yourself while still catering to your primary audience. It's important that we start building bridges between ourselves and those that are different than us. Overall, I enjoyed expressing myself through writing because I chose how I wanted to frame my thoughts with many different notions in mind, such as my audience or purpose.

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Moreover, I write to learn, and I write to understand more. This semester I believe I did both.