Week 4 Journal

Katriel and Farrell definitely contributed to our conversation about everyday writing. Throughout the class, my views of everyday writing continues to grow, just as it did after reading this article. After reading what the article stated, I no longer think writing is the only thing that makes something a piece of everyday writing. I now understand pictures can be considered everyday writing because although there might not be words, they still are able to share a story and a lot about a person.   

Reading Katriel and Farrell’s article definitely made me think differently about what I consider to be everyday writing. Before reading this article, I never really considered scrapbooks or zines to be a form of everyday writing. Now, they both fit into my definition. According to Katriel and Farrell, scrapbooks are highly personalized and show ones experiences and life stories. Although scrapbooks aren’t normally seen as a form of writing, they usually have captions that describe the events in the pictures. These captions allow people who were not at the particular even to know what exactly was going on. Zines are also an example of everyday writing because they are also a way for the creator to write whatever thoughts or ideas they have but can also include a picture to paint a better picture into the readers head. People who create zines do not get paid yet I still would consider zines as everyday writing just like I would consider a nonprofessional writer who writes without getting published or paid. 

Week 4 Journal

Katriel and Farrell contributes to our conversations about everyday writing by explaining that scrapbooks are created for the sake of keeping memories alive on pages. They are arranged in a specific order, whether it is in order of when the pictures were taken or a page of similar events. Scrapbooks tell stories with and without captions, but with captions they are more easily understood by those who were not there at the time the picture was taken. Katriel and Farrell say that it is about “making decisions about what goes in, that you’re having that kind of dialogue, which the subtext is:  what’s important to you?” People who make scrapbooks tend to glorify some things or pictures more than others, and they display these things on papers for others to look through in order to find out what those glorified things are.

Scrapbooks are an example of everyday writing because people create them to organize the memories that they captured on film. The pictures are captioned so that when friends and family look through the scrapbook, they can read the caption to find out what was happening at the time the picture was taken. This can revive memories for those who were there or paint a picture for those who were not. Zines are an example of everyday writing because the creator of a zine writes about whatever he or she wants while including pictures, drawings, or even materials that help bring the zine together. Usually a non-profit hobby, it is like a magazine that anybody can make using their imagination or factual information.

Week 4 Journal

Katriel and Farrell contribute a great deal to our understanding of everyday writing in numerous ways. One of which is the way that their text has broadened my view of what exactly could fall under this category. Prior to reading this, one might think that artsy pieces such as scrapbooks and Zines, unless they contain actual text, would not be considered "everyday writing." However, when considering all of the components that go into the process of creating these items, a new perspective can be gained. For example, when creating a scrapbook a person goes through three basic steps which include collecting, putting together and then sharing their work. This is similar in a way to the processes that your typical author would go through as he/she gathers or collects information, organizes their content, and then publishes their work to be viewed by others. Zines are similar to scrapbooks in the way that they are put together as well, except they resemble the typical work of a published author more so. By reading this piece I have gained a broader genre to which I define everyday writing, and have a better understanding oh how it is not so much the actual text, but rather the relaying of information or content that makes something everyday writing.
I would now consider both scrapbooks and Zines to be examples of everyday writing because they require similar thinking processes and efforts that are involved in the everyday writing of an author or other published writer. These are methods of expressing stories, whether it be of a special event, a specific time in ones life, or even presenting information, opinionated or factual on a topic of interest. No matter the specific intensions behind these projects, the common thread which links them to everyday writing is their purpose of relaying information of some sort in some way.

Week 3 Journal

The people from the text that live in the Shenandoah National Park are writers because they expressed their views by writing.  There is no one in the world that has the certification to determine if someone is a writer or not.  The term is simply relative to each person's idea of the word.  In my mind the people became writers when they decided to write letters instead of another action that possible could have been aggressive or violent.  A writer can be a five year old child who is writing a very simple story or it could be a renowned artist of writing whom has won dozens of novel awards.  

Week 3

The people of Shenandoah Park were certainly not writers by my standards. They wrote letters to the park officials about problems they were facing and if they could have assistance. The writing abilities demonstrated by the residents are, for the most part, at a level demonstrating very little education. The spelling and grammar (although some it might be correct given the time period) is not well thought out and it would appear as though the people write the same way they speak. If I was to consider the residents writers simply because they wrote something I feel as though the question “what is a writer” becomes a redundancy as the answer includes every literate person. For my definition of what constitutes a writer I am going to try and narrow down the amount of people who can claim writer as a title.

I believe the title of writer should be given to those who write at some sort of professional level. What I mean is people who: write for magazines/newspapers, authors of books, or any other type of writing that reaches a relatively large audience. In addition to quality I think quantity, as in the length of the writing and how often the individual writes, is important in classifying someone as a writer. Ideally a writer should be able to profit from his/her work. A writers revenue should be looked at in order to rank writers on how well they write because success is the goal most writers strive to achieve. 

Week 3 Journal

The people of Shenandoah National Park are definitely writers. There is no discrimination when it comes to the bylaws of who can and can't be a writer. A writer is simply a being that has thoughts and then turns those thoughts into words. Since the people of Shenandoah National Park decided to express their feelings by letter to the officials kicking them from their homes, they became writers, it's as simple as that.

Week 3 Journal

According to my understanding, there is a special permission to the people who are residing near or on the Shenandoah National Park, which is to take whatever is on or in the houses in the park as long as the houses were empty, and the letters from the people are mostly either showing gratitude for the permission or asking permission to defend their honor as Powell describes. They did not want the park officials to misunderstand them as thieves and mistreat them as such, when in fact they had a special permission to do what they were doing. In defense to their honor, they wrote to whomever they thought were responsible for the park, either the chief of the officials, Mr. Haskins, or Mr. J. R. Lassiter, asking permission when they didn’t want confusion on who gets what in the house, or letting the park officials to know that there were some shady people who were trying to disrupt the peace by making and selling whiskeys. This action of writing letters to the park officials make them writers, as I consider the fundamental definition of writer being the one who performs action, writing. As long as that person is writing, even if that piece of writing is grammatically wrong (which is the case for the most of the letters by the people from the park), the person is considered as a writer, to my standard. I remember that there is a South Korean writer who has written a book in which only chat language was used for the entire book. It may not be considered as a proper literature, but it is still a piece of writing.