Time to Revise...

Upon reading the Academic Writing book, I realized that there are many aspects of an argumentative essay that have to be feasible in order for it to be understood. Another fact I learned was that you have to switch up your diction in order to keep it from being boring and repetitive. When you have interesting but relatable diction it engages the reader more and keeps them reading. I also noticed that the order you put your facts in the essay also makes a huge difference as to how it is perceived. For example, if you start off straight with the something you don't agree with and don't state WHY, the reader will be confused and will not continue reading.

With these helpful hints in mind I will be able to revise my essay quite easily. Before we began the process of creating this essay, I sneaked a peek of the book, so I had a few things in mind as I began my first draft. One fact I had in mind is the use of right diction. I didn't over use "emphasize" or "help," when talking about how X will do this to Y. However, I still obviously have a lot more revising to do. I still have to gather more evidence and relate it to my argument to make the purpose of my essay strong.

My Presentation

All in all my presentation went pretty well considering my personal doubts on my public speaking skills. I was a little nervous at first but I then started to think just about how I wanted to make sure I get  my point across to the class. A strength that I felt like I had in my presentation is that of knowing what I was talking about. I obviously revised the night before and had avid notes, so I would not lose track of my thoughts and that's quite easy to do when you are in front of people. I would improve on my ability to remember all the things I want to say during a presentation. When I looked back at my notes, I had a lot of stuff that I didn't say which was important for my presentation. However, you always learn from your mistakes, so I will not repeat them in the future. Plus, the first presentation is always the most difficult and once you have conquered that obstacle you know where your strengths and faults lie and you can improve them.

"Self-Exploration" Through Blogging

In Chapter Five of Blogging by Jill Walker Rettberg there is a particular section that discusses blogging as a way of self exploration. The section discusses specific bloggers who have created blogs for a specific purpose but end up "discovering" a part of their personality or interests they did not otherwise knew existed. An example mentioned was that of a woman named Rebecca Blood who created a blog called, "Rebecca's Pocket" and through the writing of her daily posts she discovered things she was interested in, yet did not know of them before the creation of her blog. This phenomena in blogging is easily relatable to my essay because the blog I'm analyzing is a personal blog and not a "network" in which people are hired to talk about Twilight and they may not even be interested in the franchise. Personal blogs are obviously "personal" so there is always a possibility that the blogger may discover a part of them that may have otherwise been hidden. Even though, the blog I am analyzing is that of a Twilight fan and it is not a narrative, it is still possible that she may realize that she despises Edward Cullen in the movies yet loves him in the books. Personal blogging is a way for people to be independent and basically share their lives with the World Wide Web and when one is writing about themselves or a particular topic consistently, having epiphany's and discovering new interests is a common thing.

Overthinking things is never good...

The writing conference I participated in on Tuesday really helped me to understand what I needed to improve on my thought process. I also realized that I was over thinking my process for this essay and I didn't exactly comprehend my own thesis. So, taking in advice from the writing conference I now am in a position where I have a strong thesis and can also support it with good evidence. I also kept assuming that my original plan for the essay was not right and it didn't relate to the topic of the essay but I just realized that I was over thinking things. So, I kept to my original process and did not start from scratch as I thought I was going to. The writing conference assured me that I was not going down the wrong lane but actually getting off to a good start, I just needed to have that reassurance for myself.

My Research so far...

My research process so far is to gather all the information that I actually need for this essay such as the blog that I am going to be analyzing and which posts I will be further examining in detail to figure out the identity of the blogger. As we learned in class today by looking at the proposals, in order to figure out the identity I will be looking at syntax, tone and diction in the blogger’s writing. I will also determine what “label” this blogger falls under, although it is wrong to stereotype this is only for academic purposes of course. I am researching a Twilight blog, constructed by a loyal fan that is a “twi-hard” fan; there you already have a label. The only difficulty or issue I had was with my proposal which was completely wrong. Instead of trying to identify who the blogger was, I came up with random arguments about how Twilight is corrupting our society, just not with that dramatic syntax. However, now I have it all figured out and I am ready to put all my research together and form an essay.

Hoax Blogs: Ethical or Unethical?

An issue that was discussed in the book was that of blogs which are narrative but at the same time fiction yet to the followers they are perceived as real. This following quote introduces this statement and I will further discuss in this blog how "tricking" the audience into believing one is a real cancer patient as in the Kaycee Nicole blog or a girl who has occult practices in the family as in the lonelygirl15 video blog, can be unethical and extremely unfair to the followers.

"Blogs that primarily tell the story of a life or lives, as confessional blogs do, also come with problems of their own, as when readers discover that a blog they have treated as the sincere narrative of a real person's experience is actually a fiction."(111)

Although the book does not go into detail as to whether this issue is ethical or unethical but it does mention in Chapter 5 that these hoaxes do anger the loyal followers who realize that their bloggers are in fact a hoax. The two cases that this book discussed was the Kaycee Nicole blog and the lonelygirl15 video blog on youtube. The Kaycee Nicole blog was about a high school girl who was fighting leukaemia. Her blog became very popular in a short amount of time and gained the attention of many students and adults alike who supported her immensely till the end of the hoax blog. The hoax blogger even went to the trouble to create another blog, that she claimed was her mother who wrote about how she dealt with having a daughter with leukaemia. When Kaycee died in 2001, her followers were devastated. The other hoax was a video blog on youtube acted by Jessica Rose, the actress who starred as Bree in lonelygirl15 which was apparently a film project. She claimed she was extremely lonely and that her family practiced the occult and they wanted her to be a part of a ritual. However, people realized it was a hoax and many people bashed her verbally about the "betrayal."

In my opinion, it really depends on the blog's content for one to decide it to be ethical or unethical. For example, the Kaycee Nicole blog I thought was quite offensive for it to be a hoax. This girl lied about having such a horrible disease and that just seems as though she is mocking it and not taking it seriously. She manipulated people's feelings and that can be very unethical in it's own way. There could have been parents of children who have leukaemia as followers, and just imagine how they would have felt to know that it was all a hoax. As for the lonelygirl15 video blog, I just thought it was stupid and not exactly unethical but also depend on who you ask. Devout followers of the blog were probably devastated while others wouldn't have cared at all. So, are hoax blogs ethical or unethical, well it depends on who how the blog can be deemed offensive if a fake, and the audience you ask.

Blogging Interests

So, to be perfectly honest, I have never written a blog before. This is my first exposure to the huge world of blogging. I would never want to write a personal blog about my life because that would drive me crazy. I have a hard time talking about myself, although I don't want to get too philosophical and get mistaken for someone who can't "find themselves" in the world. I know perfectly who I am and what I want in life, I just don't like writing about it.

So, anyway I have an interest in pretty much everything except math and Justin Beiber. I love all kinds of music(except you know who), classic rock especially! I have been singing for the past 9 years and have not stopped ever since. It's my dream to be on stage someday, singing in front of thousands of people. I also love to watch movies, especially scary movies and I happened to find a blog about that specific topic, yay! Traveling around the world is something I would want to do before I die because I want to enjoy  the beauty and history of hundreds of fascinating places. Now that we're on the topic of traveling, I have a strange liking for airports. I love everything about them, watching people from different countries pass you by, the smell of espresso, the cute little gift shops and the airplanes taking off just always seem to amaze me.  I also love to read classic novels that have a strong and confident woman as the protagonist such as Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice, although I'm not a feminist, it's nice to relate to a woman who knows her place in life. I would have picked books as a blog topic to research but I like to interpret my own meanings of the novels I read because I love exploring my imagination and discussing a book to death would kill off the enjoyment of the novel altogether. Sometimes you should just leave things just the way they are.

After much contemplation (NOT!) I decided to pick movies as my blog topic to discuss because I personally enjoy watching movies (I know basically all the actors in Hollywood by heart) and also because I would enjoy reading other people's opinions about movies like how a  movie should have ended. Although, I'm new to blogging I think I am here to stay.

Who I am as a writer.

As a writer, I am someone who is very independent and good at writing creative stories about topics that interest me. When forced to write about something I'm not quite interested in kind of bothers me, but I have learned to suck it up. Writing comes pretty naturally to me, because I took AP class all throughout High School which taught me how to write effectively. Once I get good at something I want to keep doing it, just like writing. I would love to publish a novel someday.