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.