{"id":175,"date":"2016-09-09T10:41:44","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T14:41:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/?p=175"},"modified":"2016-09-09T10:44:58","modified_gmt":"2016-09-09T14:44:58","slug":"reid-ballenger-and-trixie-mattel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/09\/09\/10\/41\/reid-ballenger-and-trixie-mattel\/","title":{"rendered":"Reid, Ballenger and Trixie Mattel."},"content":{"rendered":"

I feel that the questions that Reid provides are a good starting place to start thinking about writing. One can’t just begin to write without thinking something. For instance, before I began writing this post, I knew where it would go and who would read it, and that influenced\u00a0how this post is written. I am writing more formally than I would if I were texting someone because this more formal form of writing is what is expected of writers writing in academia. If someone is just writing for fun and does not intend for anyone to read what they are writing, then the author<\/em> is the audience and this directly effects the way the author is writing. This leads into Reid’s second question: the purpose for writing. To me, the purpose and the audience are directly related. It wouldn’t make sense for someone to write an argumentative paper that is pro choice\u00a0for an audience that is pro choice. Sure, the paper may present new research or statistics or something of use to the audience, but the goal of an argumentative paper is change someone’s perspective. It is impossible to change someone’s perspective to a perspective that they already possess. So, there is a link between the audience and the purpose of one’s writing. This ties into the third question Reid gives: what is the genre and its conventions? One has to know the genre that they are writing in and how the genre is written. Returning to the example of someone who is writing for fun, their genre could be considered freestyle or informal writing or what ever they want to consider it. This reminds me of a YouTube series entitled “UNHhhh,” where RuPaul’s Drag Race stars Trixie Mattel and Katya start out every episode by saying, “… the show were we talk about whatever we want because its our show and not yours.” If you’re writing for fun, it’s your writing and you can write how ever you want and you can write about whatever you want. However, going back to the example of writing an argumentative paper that is pro choice, the author\u00a0must know the conventions of the\u00a0argumentative genre. If they do not, they might not be able to create as strong an argument as someone who does know the conventions of the genre.<\/p>\n

Ballenger presents the concept of creating an “interest inventory” which I find to be an interesting concept. It seems to me that it can be very useful in drafting a paper or deciding on a topic. It seems promising but I do see flaws in using this. The main one is that it will probably generate garbage. Although there might be a hidden gem somewhere in the list, there’s more than likely not. Just spewing out random stuff may lead to an interesting and colorful train of thought, but there needs to be some bounds of thought to create a viable topic. For me, the fault is exemplified in the example given: teeth whiting. I can agree that research on teeth whiting is perfectly valid, but I don’t see it becoming a thing unless the author is taking dental courses or a course that call for such a topic. In my writing experience, I do not think this is a concept that I would have ever applied when trying to decide on a topic. Creating lists and asking questions for research is definitely something I have done, just not in the way that Ballenger is suggesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I feel that the questions that Reid provides are a good starting place to start thinking about writing. One can’t just begin to write without thinking something. For instance, before I began writing this post, I knew where it would go and who would read it, and that influenced\u00a0how this post is written. I am […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techrhet.com\/3310\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}