A Writer's World
"In the beginning, was the WORD"
Step 1: What It Was Before
Originally, it was an essay for my English class. Our assignment was to take one everyday object and talk about it through a variety of different lenses such as history and culture. I picked rings because I was interested in the history of engagement rings. This paper was the best candidate for re-purposing because it seemed to have a clear direction: meanings behind everyday objects. In my mind, I was going to change it into a Vogue article where girls could read cute little informational blurbs about rings. But the girls in my peer discussion group had a better idea. They suggested re-purposing it for a feminist magazine, and suddenly the topic seemed to hold more weight. As we talked, I found my main argument: rings had multiple meanings and not all of them had to do with love and marriage. It was something that came up often in my head as I was writing the paper.
Step 2: The Unintentional Detour
As I started changing my paper into a blog post, things seemed easy. I didn't have to use fancy language, I could focus simply on the cultural and historical aspect of the ring, and I could use pictures. I researched some new information on the history of rings and gathered images and videos to support my argument. I made sure to read a couple Bust articles to make sure that mine looked and sounded similar to their blog. I had chosen Bust out of the others because I wanted my article to be in a feminist magazine that also talked about popular culture, and this magazine fit the mold perfectly. But in the back of my head, I knew that something did not feel right. I was missing something.
Step 3: Returning to Roots
It wasn't until I met with Shelley that I could clearly enunciated what had gone wrong. I had taken a slight detour in my argument. For some reason, instead of focusing on the multiple meanings of rings, I had veered off into talking about the sexist ideologies behind engagement rings and how our society was so obsessed with them. Despite having the history of the ring and its other meanings, I did not tie them into the argument of the blog post. This made the article to seem very disconnected. It was what kept me from being fully satisfied with my article. After reading my feedback and talking with Shelley, I realized what I needed to change. It was a good reminder that writers need to have a CLEAR sense of what they're writing about before they write the whole thing.
The Path of "It's Not About Putting A Ring On It"
Re-purposing was something that I had never done before. The concept of taking something that was already written and completely transforming it for another audience was foreign to me. I didn't even think about audiences when I wrote. But it was through this project that I was able to learn how to be conscientious about my writing. After all, when you have a purpose for your writing, things go a lot differently than if you're writing something from scratch.
To see the mentioned documents, please click each picture to receive a draft of the blog in it's respective stage.
Step 4: The Final Transformation
When I took a look at my blog post, I found all the places where I had veered off topic. Instead of trying to rewrite the whole thing, I kept reminding myself what my main argument was. Then I deleted, cut, and restructured my paragraphs so that the article was aligned with my argument. The final product looked a lot more like the real Bust articles. The biggest lesson I learned from re-purposing was that writing is a two way communication street. Sometimes, it's so easy to just write whatever I want to write without thinking about the audience. With essays, I never had to consider what I wanted my audience to think or feel while they were reading. But with new media writing, the link between the reader and writer is more alive. I had to think about my blog as a message. Only then was I able to re-work my article. I learned that in order to re-purpose something well, you have to know your purpose, but you also have to know who you're doing it for.