Reminisces on Digital Culture

It was really great to be able to meet with my professor and Anna and Alan yesterday and go over our papers right then and there.  It was helpful to get feedback from three different sources on my paper, its strengths and weaknesses.  I never thought that publicizing my writing process and allowing others to influence how I write and what I write about could be so helpful.  Their insights brought a whole new dimension to my writing and I honestly think it turned out for the better.

Writing a traditional research paper really makes you dig into your research and find a solid thesis.  You have to work to bring all your ideas together coherently and write in a way that makes you sound intelligent, insightful, and entertaining.  It is hard, however, to do these things, to make a large block of text worth reading, and to try to have a solid thesis that connects the entire paper.  And I won't even mention the frustration of writer's block.  It is also intimidating, you know, the idea of a "8-10 page research paper."   Writing blogs, on the other hand, is really nice because you can just get your ideas out there in a much less formal style.  You don't necessarily have to make all your ideas flow together.  It's also really helpful to get other's feedback from the very beginning as you post your thought process in short snippets that people can easily read and comment.

I think both styles of writing definitely have their place, and it has been an adventure combining both processes into something concrete and cohesive.  Blogging made me think of so many more ideas and in such different ways that totally changed my method of writing formally.  I honestly believe the informal process immensely benefits the formal process of writing, especially when it comes to social proof.  The idea of researching in this way via digital media was very overwhelming at first, but as I got used to it, and got a handle on what I was supposed to be doing and looking for, things rolled a lot smoother and proved to be productive to my writing.  Overall, it was a really great process to integrate social and digital media into my formal process of writing.  Try it out, see how it works for you!