Week 6 – Writing Socially
I found the Curwood-Magnifico-Lammer’s article to be incredibly interesting. Particularly because my middle school years were full of online writing. I utilized a cite called “Worthy of Publishing” that provided a platform for aspiring writers to post their chapters and have others comment on them. It truly demonstrated to me the power of having an audience. I wrote because people wanted to know about my story. I got feedback and was able to read imperfect writing in order to understand what good writing looks like. It was an incredibly formative time for me as a writer.
Additionally, I found it interesting the idea of implementing this type of format in a classroom. When I was in middle school two other girls and me were all working on our own “novels.” We formed a mini community by emailing each other our work and giving feedback. We motivated each other and created our own small social network to motivate our writing. I can’t help but think utilizing peers in motivating young writers is critical and I honestly believe using a social network in order to do that is brilliant. I think that affinity groups form that type of platform naturally but I wonder if there is a way to create a platform, like “Worthy of Publishing,” targeted at youth, where completely original work could be created.