Reflections of Unconventional Writing

Come to think of it, what is conventional writing anyway? It it being in a candle-lit room with a Quill Ink Pen carefully writing on a piece of special paper? Is it sitting in a quiet place with a note pad and a pencil jotting down anything and everything that comes to mind? Is it being on a bench in the park or on the grass and scribbling something illegible? Is it being at a coffee shop on a Laptop busy typing away in an atmosphere that encourages some form of dispersion? Is it being on a computer with so many windows and tabs that it looks like no work is going to get done? I would definitely say no to the last one but then again who am I to say how a person is supposed to write? As Chris said in class, if you produce your best writing at 3AM, more power to you. I suppose I still have trouble breaking away from the idea that a 'real' writing class is filled with 5-7+ page papers, and two or more 200+ page novels. At least once or twice every week where the class discusses some form of grammar, punctuation, or how to write a good thesis statement. Proper punctuation, run together sentences, sentence fragments, and other such mundane details are carefully scrutinized. Mistakes are corrected till they are virtually nonexistent. It's boring but that's what English is right?

This class has been such a unique experience that I will remember for a long time. The class started off using Keywords as a springboard to discussion. The first week or two of class, we appeared to be choosing keywords at random then analyzing and discussing them thoroughly. It almost felt like we were beating those words to death. As time went by, in one week a talk about aesthetics somehow became related to Wall-E and a page of Google image printouts on family, a discussion about family eventually led to a debate about writing something by hand versus typing something out, and an examination of youth became a debate about experiences, relationships, and identities in real life versus online. We even had a 'group therapy' session in the first few days of class discussing the pursuit of happiness. This class has turned into an open, relatively unstructured forum. Wow, what a ride.

I enjoyed this class a whole lot. I'm more than thrilled I don't have to read 2-300 page novels then write 5-7 papers on it. I'm so happy I am able to write 6000 words over the course of a few weeks while actually enjoying it. Having a goal of writing something 2-300 words easily became 5-600 word posts. This class was initially a requirement but became a little more than that. It became a large circle where thoughts run freely, and a place where everybody has something to bring to the table. The first class of my days have turned into an intense discussion that quickly passes by 100 minutes of time. Is this really a writing class or a long discussion? I say it is indeed a writing class, and we practice one of the most important aspects of writing--critical thinking. Also what better way is there to practice writing than to write frequently as opposed to a writing only a few large papers that are usually not given enough attention? It may sound like I am simply praising this class, but that is not my intention. My enthusiasm is genuine and not to be contained. Has my writing improved over this course? I can't say for sure, but I can surely say I have written 6000 words, observed and discussed matters from different perspectives and enjoyed the entire process. After experiencing blogging online three times a week, I haven't learned any new vocabulary, or any new rules of grammar or punctuation. Those things anybody can learn from books. What I had is a lot of is practice, practice, practice, and putting my thoughts into words. After all, aren't those the real goals of a writing class?