My revision process was pretty different from my writing process in terms of when and where. While I was in my room around midnight while writing it, I revised my project between classes in the library’s dunkin donuts from 12 to 2. For my project, personally, writing and revising were vastly different. Writing it gave me the chance to put down all of my ideas and link them to each other, with no regards to how easy it would be for someone else to follow. What made the reviding part of the project so much different than the first part is that it was mostly figuring out formatting and how I wanted to make the map look. I wanted a more structured and followable format rather than the asymmetrical mess it started as when I wrote it. I was able to move ideas around and connect them more directly, and see which ideas linked up together. 

While the location and time was vastly different than where I made my first draft, I felt good about it. I did not feel stressed at all. As far as I go, I thought it was fairly relaxing, and since I already had a lot of it changed from what I did while writing it, and I was able to focus more on the structure, and add and change as I went on if I needed to. Getting rid of the anxiety from knowing it was messy and incoherent is what made it so relaxing. The only way I can think to describe it would be the difference between when your mom asks you to clean and when you make the choice to clean on your own. When your mom told you to clean, you’d be pissed or at least inconvenienced. But when you choose to clean, you put on music and put in actual effort. It feels fun and relaxing, and at the end, you can just take a step back and be proud of your work.

When I was doing my first draft, I was in my room from around 1 to 4 at night watching a bunch of different youtube videos of sports analysts and their takes on whether or not Eli Manning should be in the Hall of Fame, in order to try and get different perspectives on both sides of the argument. Earlier in the day, I also had some of my friends text me their reasons on why they think Eli should not be in the Hall of Fame, so I could try to include the thoughts of the average sports fans who think he does not deserve it, and not just analysts. Typically, I have music on in the background, but I think the sports analysts were a better fit in this case since it was able to give me different insights and quotes. So while it varied from what I normally do, I feel it was a better choice than music. I felt good about my writing process for this project so far. I was pretty excited and happy to be able to write about something that I enjoy and have strong feelings about rather than some prompt that I am forced to choose a side on that I couldn’t care about. 

Lamott says that almost every first draft is shitty, but this framework provides writers with the ability and opportunity to change their papers and make them more complex or coherent. In regards to my own writing and writing process, I agree with her. However, I feel that because I change my writing while I am in the middle of it instead of breaking it up into different operations like she does, my first drafts are at least somewhat decent and coherent, rather than the mess she describes hers as.

I’ll usually grab something to eat, maybe a sandwich or just chips, and a drink with it. I’ll turn on some quiet music in the background, nothing that is too loud or crazy or else I won’t be able to focus, but something that is enough to keep my attention and keep me working. Then, I’ll just sit down and write. Coincidently, same as the second author, I also have severe insomnia. A lot of times, I use that extra time to do homework or write essays, which tires me out so I can finally go to sleep. I continuously use the same document and don’t make any different amount of drafts really. If I want to change, add, or remove something, I’ll just do it. Depending on what I am writing, I can either bang it out in less than two hours and have it done, or I’ll have to repeatedly go back and try to elaborate somewhere to increase the word count or make it sound better or more intelligent. Typically, I try to keep my sentences decent length and not too dense because when I read, if something is too long or dense and I have to reread it multiple times, it ruins any kind of flow a text has and it’s harder for me to get back into it. Because of how I read, I try to have an informal tone, almost as if I was saying it in a conversation to make my work more understandable and, hopefully, easier to keep someone’s attention.

The first reading talks about drafts almost like finished versions, with each draft being an upgrade to the last. Personally, I can’t really go on past a sentence if I don’t like it, so by the time I have a completed draft, it is already close to being done in terms of editing and revising. Like the first article says, after that the only things I’ll change is if the sentence or idea can be better. However, a lot of times, since I already did it while writing, I’ll feel like I’ve conveyed what I wanted to say in the way I wanted to say it. In the second reading, it appears the author makes editing notes within the text. Personally, I feel that wouldn’t work for me since I will either fix it then, or remember it in the end.

The authors of this piece are Carl G. Herndl and Stuart C. Brown, two Professors both from New Mexico State University. Herndl is an Associate Professor of English, and Brown is a Rhetorical History and Criticism Professor. The audience of this piece is scholars, other rhetoricians, other environmental rhetoricians to be more specific, and maybe even just environmentalists too. Herndl and Brown say that rhetoric can be extremely influential in how something is perceived, and how people may respond to it. For example, Herndl and Brown talk about a direct mailing that was intended to raise awareness and funds about cranes and their loss of habitat. However, the card talked about the cranes in ways such as “prime real estate” and a small donation could get it its “first motel stop”. Even though they are trying to help and support the cranes and their habitats, by talking about them in ways such as real estate, they are commercializing them, and reinforcing the ideology and values that have lead to their loss of habitat in the first place. The main argument of this text is that the environment is a concept and an associated set of cultural values. Additionally, they say that there is no environment separate from the words we use to represent it, and “how it is affected by our actions only through the language we have developed to talk about these issues.” For example, in the first page of the  text, it talks about environmental discourse, and how many people and organizations have debated over the environment, while not knowing or realizing that the environment is a result of discourse. The purpose of this article is to inform and raise awareness about how the way we talk about the environment can have very strong and very real effects on it, based on the way it makes people think, feel, and respond. 

Jenny Edbauer has lived in Austin, Texas since the early 1990’s, and is a writing professor at the University of Kentucky. The main audience for this text seems to be other scholars and rhetoricians. Her definition of rhetoric is similar to Bitzer’s, however she improves upon his idea by taking into account the fact that multiple factors of a situation blur together into exigence, rather than a single one being the cause. She shows this by recalling what two rhetoricians said about President George H.W. Bush’s war on drugs campaign. They say that the war on drugs campaign was caused by “concerns about safe neighborhoods, media images, encounters of everyday life in certain places, concerns about re-election, articulations of problems and the circulation of those articulations, and so forth.” She goes on to say that the exigence isn’t found in any one of these reasons, in fact, they all blend together to give exigence to President Bush’s war on drugs. Edbauer’s main argument is that rhetorical situations lead into an occurrence she calls “Rhetorical Ecology.” Rhetorical ecology entails thinking about a rhetorical situation in an open network, rather than a closed, one-off system. She elaborates upon this idea through the explanation of the slogan, “Keep Austin Weird.” This slogan was originally used to combat big businesses and the shutdown of unique shops in Austin due to the inability to compete with them. However, as the slogan gained more traction, it formed a rhetorical ecology, leading to slogans such as “Keep Austin Reading”, “Keep Austin Liberal Arts,” and “Keep Austin Normal.” She explains that these slogans, except “Keep Austin Normal,” while have absolutely nothing in common with battling big business, play into the same rhetorical ecology due to the use of the obviously derivative slogans. Edbauer’s purpose is to inform others about how a rhetorical situation can be caused by a mix of different events, and how these rhetorical situations can lead to a rhetorical ecology.

The writer of “The Rhetorical Situation” is Lloyd F. Blitzer, who is the Associate Professor of Speech at the University of Wisconsin. His audience was the faculty that attended his public lecture at Cornell University in 1966 and the University of Washington in 1967. He says that for rhetoric to exist in speech, it must be in response to a rhetorical situation. In order to illustrate this, he describes a eulogy about President John F. Kennedy after his assassination, and a eulogy about a fictitious character. Because President JFK was real and his death provided a rhetorical situation, his eulogy had rhetoric. However, since the fictitious character was not real and their death didn’t provide any rhetorical situation in the real world, their eulogy has no rhetoric. The main message of this text is to define what a rhetorical situation is, which is an event that consists of an exigence, an audience, and a set of constraints, in order to show when a piece of speech is rhetoric. The purpose of this piece is to inform others about what makes a piece have rhetoric, and how to define and identify a rhetorical situation.

The writer of “Rhetoric is Synonymous with Empty Speech” is Patricia Roberts-Miller. She is a professor of rhetoric and writing and director of the writing center at the University of Texas. Her audience is other people whose career encompasses writing and rhetoric. She says that rhetoric “is a contingent, pragmatic, and generally verbal way of approaching problems we face as members of communities.” The main idea of her article is that rhetoric, while it may be more dense and more difficult to understand, can explain more effectively and precisely than simpler language can. The purpose of this text is to inform the audience on a few historical views on rhetoric while describing why it is an important concept to know and use.

In my junior year of highschool, I took an english class where the main focus was rhetorical analysis and persuasive essays. In that class rhetoric was described as writing in a persuasive manner, through the use of logic, emotion, or credibility. 

Logic, commonly called logos, uses logic and reason to attempt to make a viable argument or point. Typically, authors or speakers will use facts, such as data from studies and research. Alternatively, they could also break something down to lead an audience to a desired answer or use an allegory to try and show an audience a desired outcome. For example, a speaker may say something about the strength of the U.S. economy, and back it up with a statistic. 

Emotion, commonly called pathos, attempts to use the emotion of an audience to sway their opinion. There are many ways to do this, from as simple as a Made in America sticker appealing to our sense of patriotism, to evoking pity and sorrow when talking about the Australian wildfires. This is mainly how propaganda works. Propaganda, such as “Uncle Sam Wants you for the U.S. Army,” works by appealing to one’s sense of patriotism, and Rosie the Riveter by appealing to women wanting to be empowered in a workplace. 

Finally, Credibility, commonly called ethos, tries to use the merits of the author or speaker, typically something like their career or their education, to give weight to what they have to say. A speaker may preface what they are about to say by giving a background of their life, education, or career, in order to support their arguments and back them up. Anyone can start to speak about anything, but without some sort of credibility in that area, people might not believe them. For example, doctors have degrees from their medical schools saying that they are capable of examining a patient accurately. People would probably rather go to a licensed doctor than only google their symptoms and believe what the internet says you have because the doctor’s degree says that they are credible. On top of this, ethos can also extend to the data that you are using, and if that is credible. Is it coming from a university study or did you hear someone say it on the street? If your facts cannot be supported, they are not facts and lose their weight.

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.