~They Say, I Say~

A few key elements in They Say, I Say really reverberated in my mind as things to pay attention to in my paper and to check when I am revising. One of those elements is making sure to present information in the natural order that readers process it. This is important because if the content of the essay is out of order it can make the information, no matter how well thought-out and written it is, confusing to the reader. Another crucial part of writing an effective paper is finding the correct balance between writing academically and using your own voice. Fully academic essays run the risk of coming off as boring or just an endless string of big words instead of someone's actual thoughts and opinions. Perhaps the most important aspect, especially of the essay we are writing right now, is use of metacommentary. Metacommentary is essential to a good essay because without it all you would have are reasons and evidence, when the explanations and deeper-thinking are the most vital parts of a great paper. So for all of the reasons discussed above, I'm going to make sure to pay extra attention to these elements in my paper.

~My Presentation~

After practicing my presentation I decided to delete my last slide because I didn't feel like it was important enough and that if I kept it I ran the risk of exceeding my time limit. After my presentation I am going to rethink the organization of my paper to make sure that the elements in paragraphs all connect together and are important enough to be included. Strengths from my presentation I would probably say were speaking loudly and clearly, making eye contact, and showing the connections between evidence and identity from my blog. Changes I would make include reconsidering the groupings of some of my information, and having the slides show on my laptop not just up on the screen so I could have shown the blog website like I had planned when I was discussing the appearance and pictures.

~Using Blogging in my essay~

To incorporate Blogging into my essay I have found a few parts of the book from my notes on the readings that I think would work well in supporting my argument and adding credibility and interest to my essay. The first quote I found that I can use is to quote the claim that "on the Internet, everyone is famous to 15 people" in my first body paragraph where I discuss how the blogger wants people to be impressed by him. This way I can use the quote as further evidence to back up my claim that he uses his blog to build an impressive self-identity. I can also use a quote about "dear diary" writing and how blogging is a social genre where people write to their audiences. That type of quote would probably fit best into my intro paragraph.
I'm a little relieved to have so easily found some quotes that fit into my essay because I usually take the opposite approach of finding some good quotes that support the argument that's in my mind and then building around them in my essay.

~Writing Conferences~

Today was my group's writing conference where I presented the first two pages of my paper and basically outlined what my argument is going to be. I don't feel like I got a lot of feedback but maybe I'll get more after I read the copy Prof Thompson wrote on and next week when we do the readers reviews. Mostly what I know I need to work on in my paper is my thesis. My first draft has my thesis about half-baked but I need to add something that says what the elements say about identity, not just what I'll be looking at. After listening to feedback other people got I also plan to go back through my essay and make sure I'm making connections for my reader and supporting everything that I say. Also I want to make sure that the points I'm bringing up are valid and I don't say anything off-topic that doesn't need to be there. But I don't think I have anything like that in my paper, I didn't have problems getting to the required length so there's not really any padding in it. I just discussed everything I thought was relevant and wrote enough to form my argument and get my point across.

~I found a blog!~

I'm excited to have found a blog to research! It is probably the most perfect blog I could have found for the topic (networking, communication, blogs) that I was interested in because it's a blog on social media. I think it says something that a blog by someone in New Zealand could be useful for a topic like this, it contributes to how expansive the Internet and technology in general is.
I found my writing proposal helpful in starting to learn what aspects of the blog we're researching to examine. I believe that proposals also help to get your mind, subconsciously and consciously, thinking about your topic. I learned this from a professor I had last year who said when people think they have writers block it's not because you're stuck or can't think of anything to write, it's because your brain is still thinking and processing and exploring. Ever since I heard this it has helped to make me more aware of my own thinking and sometimes I catch myself offhandedly thinking about a class or a project in the very early stages and I now recognize it as my brain forming thoughts and ideas about the topic.
Soon we will start commenting on each others blogs in the topic groups we are in. I might not get as specific feedback because I'm the only one in my group with my topic- everyone else is doing music. But maybe it will be helpful to have objective feedback from someone not researching the same thing, who knows!

~Interesting Passage in Blogging~

"As blogs become more and more common, they may develop more conventions that make them less susceptible to these anxieties about truth and fiction. We may also see more blog narratives that are explicitly fictional and that never attempt to fool their readers" (Rettberg 126).

What Rettberg is addressing in this quote is the issue of bloggers who essentially make-up characters and stories and blog about them without informing the reader of their fictitious nature. Since journal like blogs of this nature are generally truthful of people's lives and real situations, readers become emotionally invested in the blog and then subsequently feel tricked and betrayed when they learn that what they have been reading is not true.

I find it interesting that people use blogs this way when by the very nature of a blog it's purpose is to share opinions, learn about a specific topic, or record personal thoughts and emotions. Blog writers are aware of their audience (or potential audience) and write in a way conscious of the fact that it most likely will be read by others. People exploiting this fact is taking that a step further, by fabricating stories of human interest these bloggers are not only editing their lives to appeal to readers, but inventing experiences separate from their own to gain more readers and generate more feedback. This adds a whole new level to the narcissism of blogging.

Rettberg, Jill Walker. Blogging: Digital Media and Society Series. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008. Print.

~Writing&Research~

My interests include music, my dog, musical theater, reading, and children (babysitting, teaching). However, none of these constitute the particular type of blog I would prefer to study. I've never been one to write a blog or be interested in blogs, but from the reading we have done so far in "Blogging" I find the way people share information and communicate through blogs very interesting. Being a part of the generation of advancing technological skills I feel like I should probably have a better understanding of how blogs work. I am definitely aware of a similar type of information network on facebook and how it operates and the benefits (and negative effects) of having vast networks to share information over. I would like to study a blog about blogs, or about networking and information sharing. I hope to learn more about how blogging functions and how people use it to communicate. This holds personal interest and I also believe it would be helpful supplemental material for the course. I have been searching for blogs on communication, networking, and blogging but have so far been unsuccessful. I'm not sure what I want to write my paper about yet, I will have to look over my notes from Blogging and see what has caught my interest.

~As a Writer I am...~

Always in the drivers seat. I choose how smooth or jolting your ride as a reader will be.

Creative to a fault, I have to be sure not to let my sentences spin out of control.

Constantly changing, making u-turns and going in reverse to improve.

As a writer I am... myself.