Dear Students,

The following letter represents my perspective on the power and purpose of writing. I have an intensely personal relationship with language that I hope to use to inspire each of you in your journeys as writers. Try not to resist the “writer” label as each of us deploys written language for one function or another. I believe that writing is a skill. We are not born “writers” or “not writers,” but rather we are all people who write with varying degrees of expertise. We are all capable of becoming better writers. For most of my time as an undergraduate, I saw writing as a necessary evil of the classroom, and it was an immense challenge to disabuse myself of this illusion.

“I’m a reader not a writer.” This became my refrain as an undergraduate English major. While I loved to read and discuss literature, I saw writing as the painful and arduous endeavor. I never wrote for my own pleasure. Reading allows me to hide behind someone else’s perfect words. As a literature student, I have been able to focus my writing on analysis of others’ work which is the type of writing I enjoy the most. Over the course of my MA studies, I crafted a number of term papers about works of fiction and literary theory, and I’m quite proud of some of them. As I moved forward in my academic work, I became increasingly enamored with intersectional feminist studies, and I incorporated more and more theory into my literary analysis. For me, writing serves as a tangible product of the primary intellectual work that I do. I intend to become the strongest academic writer that I possibly can be in order to make a career for myself as a scholar. Reading and analysis is my first love, and writing is my tool to share that with other people.

In graduate school, I developed a method of invention that allowed me adequate time to develop my ideas for term papers. As most of my classes consisted of just one final paper or perhaps a final and a midterm, I needed a way to preserve the best ideas I had over the course of the semester which could culminate in a longer paper. I’m a vigilant and steadfast note taker as a student, and I made space in my notebooks devoted entirely to potential paper ideas. Throughout the semester, during class or during readings, I would jot term paper ideas in this designated area of my notebook. For me, allowing enough time in the invention process is essential. When the time comes to compose final papers, I have an array of ideas to play with, and I’m much more likely to land on a topic that engages and excites me. I didn’t even know to call this “invention” as I was doing it. It was just a method of saving my ideas for the moment that I needed them.

In high school, I wrote papers entirely linearly, but as I progressed in my education, I started doing more prewriting and gradual fleshing out of papers. Instead of moving from introduction straight through to conclusion, I write with the whole work in mind. Now, I start with a somewhat skeletal version of a final product and fill in textual evidence and connective language as I get closer to completion. When I begin writing a paper, I make a rough outline, and I attempt to formulate a topic sentence for each paragraph. I then pull all of the textual evidence I want to use from both my primary and secondary sources and place it in the appropriate paragraph. This almost formulaic approach lends my writing more direction and continuity. This process has mitigated the anxiety surrounding academic writing for me. I trust myself to not only come up with at least one solid essay idea over the course of the course of the semester but also to hold onto that idea for the time I need it.

Teaching my students to write has reminded me of how broad the field of composition is. I have come to take for granted the ability to construct a well-written email and to compose a cover letter. I feel as if I am gaining a fresh perspective on what it means to be savvy with language. As I’m teaching my students this semester, I’m repeatedly reminded of the “so what?” This is to say that when we write, we write with a purpose. The intention is to transmit, by one means or another, knowledge from my brain into another person’s brain. The more efficiently I can get my thoughts onto paper, the better I can make myself known. I’m hoping to aid you in this discovery process. As a first time teacher this semester, I have had the opportunity to explore how I write in a more critical way as well as how to best transmit my skills to my students.

This semester, I began journaling both personally and for assignments. While this type of writing appears on the surface to be entirely unrelated to my experience writing so far, my ideas about writing as personal reflection closely relates to the way I consider academic writing. I journal to reveal my own ideas to myself. Through the process of writing, I am able to distill my thoughts and reimagine the structure of my reality. Writing in this manner facilitates my process of self discovery on both a personal and professional level.

We write to transmit our thoughts to another person (or to ourselves in the case of journaling), and cultivating and refining our skills as writers serves to better connect us with our readers. I believe that reading omnivorously and frequently serves to fill your mind with words in such a way as to better prepare you to present your own perspectives in writing. Writing is a tool to share my mind with other people. I write this letter from a place of honesty and self-reflection, and I hope that you, as both a reader and student of writing, find at least one point of connection and commonality. I have chosen to write this letter to you to share my ideas about writing  and encourage you to consider how your own perspective informs your process as a writer.

All the best,

Kelly

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