So what? Who Cares?

Great question!  love to write and I do love to read, but I never have enjoyed analyzing word for word, sentence for sentence, and why the writer did what he/she may have done. I just like to do it and enjoy it and be in "flow" when I write or read. But that is not what academic disciplines are about always, and that is okay and I am okay with that. And I am enjoying the process and learning about it, even though it is not what I am use to. So I am getting out of my comfort zone, and maybe I am just a tad bit stubborn, and I am working on it. But I do want to be a better writer and reader. I truly do enjoy analyzing things, it is one of my favorite things to do, but maybe more character analysis, but again I am learning a lot and moving out of my comfort zone, which is really great and I know I will be happier and grateful that I have done it.

This week’s article, So What? Who Cares?" answers why should I care? When we write anything we need to make it clear to the audience, why they should care about what they are reading. For example, why should I care about reading like a writer, or why should I care about the legalization or decriminalization of drugs? So how do I make people care about what I am writing? What moves could I make to as a writer to make people care about my thesis? The author writes, “ To gain greater authority as a writer, it can help to name specific people or groups who have a stake in your claims and to go into some detail about their view” (p.95).So writing about people and to the people who are invested in the argument and who are involved in the issue at hand. As a writer you want to the reader to be invested in the argument or claim, so they continue to read and feel interested in what you are attempting to tell them. The author writes, “The best way to answer such questions about the larger consequences of your claims is to appeal to something that your audience already figures to care about. Whereas the ‘who cares?’ question asks you to identify an interested person or group, the ‘so what?’ question asks you to link your argument to some larger matter that readers already deem important”(p.97). Making the argument broad and and specific at the same time, can be tricky, but it can be done. Appeal to the audience with what they already care about and tell them why they should care and how it can affect and help them personally. When you make a claim or argument personal people automatically care more, so make the claim broad enough, yet personal at the same time, so “everyone is effected by this issue, ‘even you’ and this is why you should care”.

How to Read Like a Writer

How to Read Like a Writer  by Mike Bunn was a good read, about learning how to read like a writer, like the title states. It kept me captivated and I think the topic is interesting and it is something I have never actually thought about before. I honestly, do not read that much for pleasure anymore, and I do not write for pleasure anymore either, but it was something I really did enjoy when I was younger(than I am now).  I think this article makes a great statement and teaches the audience about reading for writing. I read the whole article through, and it made me think, "am I reading this like a writer?" I wanted to be a writer at one point in my life, but I do not think I ever read like a writer, because I am impatient and would skip-ahead, and skim. I never really read word-for-word. It never seemed to be my style, but now I feel like I am ripped myself off, because reading like a writer is important if I want to be a better writer, in all avenues of my writing. 

 What grabbed my attention was when Bunn stated, "I realized writing is a word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence process...I came to realize that all writing consists of a series of choices"(p.72, Bunn). It is intriguing(to me) that he said, "...all writing consists of a series of choices", because isn't that what life is kind of? A series of choices? We make choices every single day of our lives, and not to get philosophical or psychoanalytical but everything is a series of choices, and writing and reading is a part of the series of choices we choose to engage or not engage in, in our lives. We cannot fully escape reading or writing, because in our world we need this to survive, but we can do what I use to do, not read carefully or read like a writer. So I thought it was interesting Bunn said this because writing is a choice, just like everything else, a series of calculated or not so calculated choices, and reading is also a choice, and to be a better writer, you must also be a "good" reader(I think). Bunn wrote, "Reading like a writer can help you understand how the process of writing is a series of making choices, and in doing so, can help you recognize important decisions you might face and techniques you might want to use when working on your own writing"(p.75, Bunn). It is important to look at the decisions or choices you are making when reading and writing, just like in everyday life. To ask yourself questions, when you read and write. "Why did the writer put this here, and do I like that he/she did that? Could this technique work for the audience I am trying to reach?" I do not think I have ever done that while reading, but maybe while writing my own papers. And I think it is interesting that I have never been taught how to read like a reader thus far in my education and life. 

  Bunn also stated, "The idea is to carefully examine the things you read, looking at the writerly techniques in the text in order to decide if you might want to adopt similar (or the same) techniques in your writing"(p. 72, Bunn). The more you read and analyze, not necessarily the content of what you are reading, but the text and how the writer wrote is how you will become a better writer. So reading more will help you become a better writer, because if you never read its hard to analyze how you yourself want to write, but also reading mindfully and consciously about how the writer chose to write what they wrote. Bunn also wrote, "When you read like a writer, you are trying to figure out how the text you are reading was constructed so that you learn how to “build” one for yourself" (p. 74, Bunn). I think this the gist of what I was attempting to say. Basically, examine how the writer writes and decide if that works for you as a writer or not.

 I also appreciated that the author of the essay had former students give their opinion and advice about how to read like a writer, I think it was helpful for me as a student to see other students insights. I think one of the more helpful things suggested was, "The most common suggestion made by former students—mentioned by every single one of them—was to mark up the text, make com- ments in the margins, and write yourself notes and summaries both during and after reading" (p.81,Bunn). All in all, I found the article helpful and interesting. It made me realize I have not been reading like a writer and it is something I want to consciously work on and it is a choice that I am making for myself. 

Interview Questions

Interview Questions: 

When did you know you wanted to be a therapist?

What made you want to pursue a Phd in transpersonal psychology?

What type of writing do you do as a therapist?

What type of writing do you have to use as a therapist?

And what genre would you consider that type of writing?

Who was your target audience when you made your webpage?

Do you feel like you've reached that audience?

When you are marketing yourself as a therapist what changes in your writing versus when you write to clients?

On your webpage you write about yourself and your type of work, do promote yourself that way for all the types of therapy you do?

When you write up confidentiality forms for clients, do you follow a certain writing format and style? And how is that different when you write to clients? And how is that different from your webpage?

As a therapist how much do you deal with insurance?

Follow up: How do you bill insurance and does that require you to write? 

Do you texts clients?

Follow up: That type of writing is a lot different than other types of writing, how does this type of communication and writing effect the client?

Analysis of Artifacts

I originally sent an email to a therapist, who supervises the clinicians at Full Spectrum Recovery, but she did not respond. Since she did not respond I chose Anne-Marie Charest, a teacher at AUSB and a private practice therapist. I set up an appointment with Anne-Marie this Wednesday, to obtain more artifacts and interview her.  The artifacts I found were online, which were Anne-Marie’s website and a confindentiality form. 

Anne-Marie’s website is self-promotion and marketing, which allows potential clients to see what she is qualified in and what her speciality is. This genre of writing is used for many different things, it is used in the media , and people use this type of genre who are starting their own business. It is even used for schools on their website, to make their school seem interesting and the best choice out of many other schools to go to. This genre of writing is helpful to the audience because it gives the reader a better understanding of what Anne-Marie does, her qualifications, and what they would be getting if they came to her for help and as a client.  Anne-Marie also tries and does appeal to people who want to work with psychosomatic therapy, and more spiritual type work. She tries to persuade the audience to use her as a therapist and her evidence that she is a good therapist is proven by her degrees that she displays on her website. 

The confidentiality form is a contract between therapist and client that is legally binding and allows the client to feel safe. Contracts are genres that are formed to help protect two or more parties. In therapy, it mostly protects the client, which requires the therapist and the client to sign so that if the client speaks to an outside party about something said in therapy, the client can sue. Contracts are used for so many different things, for example, there are unspoken social contracts between friends, laws that are written to protect the people by the government, and doctors give forms that are contracts stating the patient will pay for treatment. Confidentiality forms are extremely important in this field, and important artifacts because it shows that the therapist is following state laws, and can be trusted. 

Both of these artifacts must be understood by the reader for them to one, to want to see Anne-Marie and two, to sign the contract. The genres are different and have different formats. The contract has a place to sign and date and feels more formal. The website tries to appeal and persuade potential clients, but is not as formal.  Both genres do try to persuade the audience to do something, one to sign, and two to come see her as client. The ultimate outcome of the website genre is promote and market, and the contract genre outcome is to have the person sign the contract. 

Back Packs Versus Briefcases

      The article Backpacks vs. Briefcases:Steps Toward Rhetorical Analysis by Laura Bolin Carroll  states"...our saturation in media and its images is one of the reasons why learning to do rhetorical analysis is so important. The more we know about how to analyze situations and draw informed conclusions, the better we can become about making savvy judgments about the people, situations and media we encounter" (p.46, Carroll). This is important information to have not only for writing but life in general, because the more perceptive and insightful we become about outside information, whether that be the media or just normal conversions with friends, the more we learn how to analyze the information and use it to our advantage. This allows us to become better critical thinkers, become more conscious of our behavior and our own writing.  Carroll also states, that understanding rhetoric is essential to being an informed consumer in today's society. We have messages coming at us from all different directions, constantly. We need to be informed, cautious, critical, insightful thinkers so we can weed out the things that are credible and matter versus the things that are not credible and do not matter. Carroll writes, "If we refuse to stop and think about how and why it persuades us, we can become mindless consumers who buy into arguments about what makes us value ourselves and what makes us happy" (p. 47, Carroll).
      Almost everything is rhetoric. It is how we influence others through written language, spoken words, pictures, and so on. Persuasion is huge, and to not be persuaded is very challenging, especially when something,an image, an article, or a person, seems so convincing. This is why it is imperative to analyze and be critical of outside information. Carroll quotes Kenneth Burke, a rhetorician, "...rhetoric is everywhere: wherever there is persuasion, there is rheto- ric. And wherever there is ‘meaning,’ there is ‘persuasion"(p. 47, Burke, Carroll).  There must be meaning for there to be persuasion, because without the meaning behind the idea, or the item you cannot argue for or against, you cannot agree or disagree. Meaning must come first, because it has to have substance, effect, and significance for there to be persuasion. Rhetorical context is extremely important, because it is about when and where the message is heard, seen or read. Exigence, audience and constraint are all part of rhetorical context and play a role in how we receive messages. The most vital part of all of this is what the writer or the person sending the message is trying to argue, say or make you believe. 
     It is so interesting that many, if not most, never think about rhetoric, or think about how messages effect the decisions we make or how we use rhetoric in our daily lives. It is the smallest things we do, that may can impact someone else. Without realizing it, we see and use rhetoric every single day because rhetoric really is everything. 

Murder and Writing Identities

       The first thing that caught my eye was the quote from Writing Identities, which states, "Rhetoric is also about saying the right thing at the right time" (p.114). There are many times when this is nessecary and I like that this is not just good information about writing, but also about social interactions. If you want to get a point across, your point across, to someone you are speaking to, and they do not understand or agree with, you have to say the "right" thing at the right time. Same goes for writing, you have to make your case or argument with compelling information and write the piece at the right time, so the audience is open to hearing you. That was just something that really stuck out to me, because I think its important to have that understanding in many different aspects of one's life, not just in writing.
     The second thing that grabbed my attention was the quote from Murder!(Rhetorically Speaking) by Janet Boyd, which states, "choosing how to express your meaning is every bit as important as the message itself, which is really what rhetoric is" (p.86, Boyd). Again, it is important to think about how the message you are trying to send the audience comes off, and how you want to the audience to react or take the message. So how you say it, and when you write it, whatever "it" is, is very important. Being conscious of how we write, speak, socialize and so on reflects upon how other people perceive us and how we want to be seen. 

    Another quote from Writing Identities, I really appreciated was, "writing means ALWAYS changing--"(p.117).  Writing changes depending on the subject, situation, audience and so on. I think it is important to be conscious about this, because I think a lot of the time, we have an unconscious understanding of this, but are not fully and always aware that we change our writing to fit different criteria. We do this often, in our daily lives, but personally, I rarely think about it when I write, I just write my papers and thats it. So again, it is important to be aware of the changes that occur when you write and before you start to write anything, because all the small things matter.

Understanding Rhetoric and Everything's an Argument

I thought both of these readings were interesting and it made me think about what it means and what it takes to write an academically sound paper. I liked the comic better than the article about argumentative papers, but maybe it was because of the style and tone of the overall texts. I know it takes a lot of work to be a good writer and to write a good academic paper is hard work, it takes time, lots of energy, thought and research.  I use to write a lot when I was younger and as I got older I realized writing creatively versus writing academically is quite different. I do not write so much anymore, unless I am assigned to do it, which I am a lot now, but I do not write for the pleasure of writing anymore. I think life just became more busy and I chose to not make time to write, because really everything is a choice. But even writing creatively can be hard, sometimes I think it is harder than writing academic papers, but it depends I guess. All writing and becoming a good writer is challenging because of the rules and the expectations depending on what you're writing and the audience. If you are writing freely without the expectation anyone will ever read what you write, the rules are different than if you are writing an academic paper meant to be read by your teacher. Or when you write a blog or for a newspaper the rules and expectations and content is different. I have written a good amount of research papers and I haven taken a college course in writing before when I was about eighteen. In that class I wrote in MLA not APA, so again the expectations are different depending on the situation. And now that I am older, my expectations of myself and myself as a writer are different. I do remember I wrote two argumentative papers, for that writing class, both for and against the issue at hand and the teacher was supposed to not be able to tell what side of the argument I was truly on, or what my true feelings were. It was a really hard assignment because I had to argue something I agreed with and than disagreed with and find sources that supported both. I will always remember that paper, because it made me a better writer. I appreciated that the article or reading about academic arguments helped the reader develop an argument step by step. I think this will be helpful for me, since I have not written a paper like that in a really long time.