Building Stories Review

Building Blocks

“The strength of a building lies in its foundation.” – Danny J. Stevens.

I. The Start
At the beginning of this semester, my Writing 101 professor Dr. Churchill asked my class our thoughts on writing templates. Were they helpful in providing structure and clarity, or were they suffocating and limiting creativity? If you asked me this question 4 months ago, I would tell you templates make writing feel too rigid and formulaic. For a creative like me, formats and templates were my worst enemies. With so many ideas that I wanted to express, I wanted to write freely, unbound by the templates that washed away my personality when writing. But as this semester ends, I’ve completely changed my tune about them. While templates and formats can produce the same robotic formulaic writing, they are the foundation of writing. Rather than limit me, templates have aided in polishing my wordy hard-to-follow writing into something well-organized and articulated. They have become the guides acting as blueprints to my foundations only strengthening my writing.

II. Sketching
“Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.” – Austin Kleon (Kleon 14)

Looking back at my first essay in this course, I was shocked to see how confusing it was. There was so much paper-ese and filler that I lost what connected to my argument. My thesis was strong but was too broad which allowed for too many ideas to come into conversation without actually connecting. It was like trying to make out a rough sketch of a drawing. There was potential, but too much unnecessary content. I remember when I wrote the essay I used the most basic format of them all: introduction, strong thesis, three body paragraphs, conclusion. Although I read the assigned readings of Cathy Birkenstein and Gerald Graff’s They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, I wasn’t applying it. At the time, I didn’t think it was necessary. I’m no perfect writer, but I didn’t see the appeal or reason to use the templates. I didn’t want to lose my voice in the rigid structures. I had all the quality ideas but weak structure and format. Once the second essay came along, I knew something needed to change. So I looked to Kleon.

Dr. Churchill introduced us to Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You about Being Creative. The book encourages artists alike to embrace influence, learn from others, and find their unique voice through the process of borrowing and transforming ideas. If you like something that someone else is doing, take it, learn from it, and use it. I had been applying this principle to all my other creative spaces, so why not writing as well? For this, I need references, inspiration, and something to latch onto that I like and want to incorporate. That’s when I read Nasia Anam’s The Migrant as Colonist: Dystopia and Apocalypse in the Literature of Mass Migration.

III. The Blueprint
For our second essay, we read Nasia Anam’s The Migrant as Colonist: Dystopia and Apocalypse in the Literature of Mass Migration as one of our sources. Her writing had voice and color, yet was still academically structured. It was engaging while still well-structured and had a strong argument. Most academic writing to me was often dull and robotic I assumed it was because that was how all academic papers had to be. Anam taught me otherwise. So I did as Kleon advised, I stole and learned from Anam’s writing. For my second essay I incorporated her sectioned headers, personal voice through strong language, and always circling back to my argument. It made my body paragraphs more clear, organized, and relevant to my argument. Her usage of personal pronouns and voice “The texts I examine here” (Anam 657) or “Secondly, I argue that perhaps even more powerfully, “ (656) made me realize I can still hold my voice, even in an academic setting. Anam became my blueprint, my new foundation for how I wanted to write. Moreover, this was not the end of me using writers as my guide.

IV. The Building
For our third essay’s readings and sources, we came into conversation with, James Forman Jr.’s Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow. Even before we got the prompt for essay 3, I was very fond of the way Forman had crafted his argument. The road map he provided made it crystal clear where and what he was going to discuss in his paper. Then he also had a strong perspective as to why he understands the counterargument to his point but why it only makes his argument stronger. I could barely find any faults in his writing, though that might be because I liked it so much. So I followed Kleon’s words, stole and learned from Forman’s writing, and even used him as my main support for my argument. Using what I learned from Anam, Forman, and the other smaller templates helped me craft my third essay, which I believe was my strongest yet.

V. Onwards
Although I cannot name any specific formats presented in Cathy Birkenstein and Gerald Graff’s They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing besides the basic They Say/I Say that I used, the lessons they wanted to convey reached me in the end. Templates are helpful. I probably unconsciously used many templates in the book without realizing it. Just like any basic lesson, templates are flexible. I may have not used the ones presented in They Say/I Say, but I used the template Kleon introduced using other authors such as Anam and Forman as my guides. I used formats. I used templates. Guess what? I liked it, they only helped to grow my creativity, not limit it. The more I learned how to write, the more I could write. Now the biggest hurdle is word count, but all I need to do is find a blueprint and learn from it.

Citations:
Anam, Nasia. “The Migrant as Colonist: Dystopia and Apocalypse in the Literature of Mass Migration.” Project Muse, Johns Hopkins University Press, Sept. 2018, muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/711837/pdf.
Forman, James Jr. “Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the new Jim Crow.” New York University Law Review, vol. 87, no. 1, April 2012, p. 21-69. HeinOnlineThesis Statement
Kleon, Austin. “Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You about Being Creative.” New York, Workman Pub. Co., 2012.

Google Doc Link:

WRI 101 Essays

Thank you to Dr.Chill for your unrivaled amount of support this semester. Thank you for an eduactional semester and 4 months of growth. You were motivational and inspiration. Thank you.

-VVB