What have you learned in Communications 337 that surprised you the most? How, specifically, did it surprise you? Here are some questions to get you started thinking about your writing. Try to focus your essay on this issue of surprise and work in your thoughts on the questions below. Don’t try to answer them all (but you will, of course, want to convince me of the depth and breadth of your reading in our texts as well as the articles we’ve posted to The Mackerel Wrapper)!
How did you see yourself as a writer before you took the course, and how would you see yourself now you have taken it? Has your writing changed as a result of the course? What worked when you wrote your feature story? What didn’t work? Which of the articles we read for class helped you as a writer, i.e. suggested techniques you might try in your own writing? Which suggested things you want to avoid at all costs! What did you learn from Donald Murray’s “Writing to Deadline” (the little green book that wouldn’t go away) and “The Writer's Digest Handbook of Magazine Article Writing?” What was beneficial? What wasn’t?
How beneficial was the material on free-lance writing and selling your work to paying markets? Did you get any useful tips? More importantly, did it help change the way you think of yourself as an aspiring professional writer? Do you feel like you're ready to start looking for markets that are open to entry-level writers and writing articles for them? Have you been able to find any such markets? If so, what are they and what specific article(s) can you try to get them to publish?
Here are some questions, adapted from an English course at the University of Colorado-Denver, to help you think about your development as a writer:
- How has your writing changed during this semester?
- What do you see as your greatest strengths as a writer?
- What areas of your writing are you still working on?
- What do you think of as “good writing?” How do you evaluate your own writing and that of others?
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