In-Class Activity Two - Samantha Murphy

Looking at my word cloud, I see little to no representation of the terms I claimed encompassed writing. They appear so small in the mosaic and I can barely recognize them as important words. This shows me that my original thoughts about the defining terms may be different from what my writing tells me. The words that appeared the most within my journal were writing, ideas, emotions, words, work and connection. Only one word out of my original six reoccurred more than the one time I listed  it. That being said, I am going to change my list to ideas, expression, passion, communication, connection and emotions. I still feel that expression, passion, connection and communication are relevant to writing even though they appeared so infrequently throughout my journal. I believe that these terms have. profuse impact on writing as a whole. However, I did remove technique and broad. I felt that by the representation within my word cloud, they did not belong as much as I had hoped. There futility in writing is not as important as the other words I kept in my list of defining terms. Writing is a way of expressing and communicating one’s own ideas and emotions. It involves a passion for the art and a connection to yourself, your emotions, and your audience.

Talking to my group mates, we realized our word clouds did not accurately represent our original list. The words in the cloud were vague and basic rather than the complex words we chose to depict writing. But maybe thats what writing is; a complex idea with a simple product.

In conclusion, this activity was a lot more giving than I expected. I was extremely confused about how this activity would help us form our own theory of writing, but once I completed physicalizing the writing map, I realized that everyone's idea of writing is different. There is no one way to view the concept of writing. Each map had different way of expressing how someone viewed the writing process, and though many people stuck with a simple map, they were all different in there own ways. My idea of writing being a way of expressing and communicating one’s own ideas and emotions is correct, but so is Tori's idea of writing and Niko's idea of writing. There will be people who will disagree with my theory, and that is okay because it is my own truth and it holds true to me. The person disagreeing with my ideas may not be the type of writer that I identify as, which remains to be a poet. And if they do identify in that area, each writer has there own outlook on their specific discipline and not one outlook is the only way. I truly believe that writing comes from the heart and without passion for the writing you do, emotions vulnerable for your discipline, ideas to explore in your writing, communication with your audience, connection to your work and expression of all of these terms, writing would not be as enjoyable or as important as it is.