I enjoyed the half semester long assignment to blog daily, although I was playing catch up from the beginning. In my 27 years, I've written no more than 20 journal entries, most of which were written at a young age. This assignment doubled my overall journal count.
One of the most difficult things for me while writing entries during this assignment was not over-editing what I was writing. This became less of an issue as the semester progressed, due in part to being more confident in my writing, as well as realizing that not every sentence I write has to be perfect.
Another difficulty I had was keeping up with the blog entries. Due to over-analyzing my writing, especially a few weeks ago early in the assignment, the entries took longer than the suggested 20 minutes. So when I'd skip a few days, it became even more difficult to get caught up. But as my writing has become more fluent, and editing more scarce, catching up became more easy.
I enjoyed the aspect of reading the blogs of my classmates. Online classes sounded very impersonal to me at first, but I feel like I know the others in this class quite well after reading their blogs.
Another thing I liked was knowing that everyone reading my blog was a fellow student. In that sense, it was like a Toastmasters for writing, where I was writing in a place where I could feel comfortable (apart from the fact that I had a professor who might read the blog!).
Something that I didn't enjoy was coming up with topics. There are a lot of topics I find interesting, but many of them would be boring for others to read or would be too long. In the end, through a mixture of predetermined topics and personal experiences, I wrote all 25.
The biggest area in which I've changed as a result of blogging this semester is that, as stated before, I don't worry as much anymore about critiquing everything I write to pieces. Writing is an art, which means there's not just one way to do it.
Kristian,
ReplyDeleteI have had many of the same challenges and thoughts which you have described in your reflection. I too got behind on my daily blogs, and as hard as I tried, I unfortunately didn't get completely caught up...which I feel was an injustice to myself and possibly others, who knows. I still have a few hours and I'm going to try to get a few more in though before the deadline. However, I did find that it became much easier as I progressed in my writing abilities. Like you I no longer "nit-picked" them...I became more comfortable knowing we are all in this together, even though some are very talented, I must say. But I have quit worrying so much about the critique. You are absolutely correct in saying "writing is an art, which means there is not just one way to do it". We each have to find our own comfort zone. Good reflection ~ Lucas Newby