Blog #4: Metaphors
My first metaphor of choice is “A Thousand Rules and Three Principles”, meaning that writers often get writer’s block because they try to follow so many rules, but there are only three real principles you need to abide by. Basically the principles state that you should write what your are passionate about, tell and show the story, and conform to the audience/ purpose you are writing for (4, Reid). In my writing I often get distracted by all the guidelines I am supposed to follow from previous teachers and my professors now, so I at times get very overwhelmed with all I am required to incorporate into my writing.
“Lost Money and Thank-You Notes: What’s in an Audience” demonstrates that with everything you write, including thank-you notes you have to write for your specific audience and secondary audience.For example, if you were writing a thank-you note to your grandma it would be informal and more personable; verses a thank-you note to a professor or boss would be formal and professional. It’s forming your writing to fit the audience and what is being asked of you. While I was in Girl Scouts we had to write short letters to friends and family to let them know I was selling cookies, if you made the letter more personable or explained what the cookie money was going towards you were more likely to receive an order.
“Fruit Jell-O: Balancing Arguments & Examples” illustrates that good writing is a balancing act between your arguments and evidence. If you have too many arguments your text becomes very boring and bland and too much evidence or reasoning makes your reader confused about the point of the piece. I find this metaphor to be very useful to keep in mind throughout my writing because I sometimes get carried away with presenting too many arguments and not explaining them as well as I should have. This at times creates an issue upon my writing because it makes what I’m writing very dull and my audience loses interest. So I recognize that using the Jell-O act of balancing is both beneficial to me as a writer and to my audience.
“Wash-and-wear Paragraph” refers to very difficult task of trying to decide how long your paragraphs should be and all those rules your professors told you to follow while writing. It is important to keep in mind that every paragraph is different and serves a particular need in your paper, much like different loads of laundry. Throughout school every teacher had a different rule for writing paragraphs, mostly saying that your paragraph had to be a certain length. Writing a paragraph and having it in the back of your mind that it needs to be X amount sentence is often overwhelming, but this metaphor explains that paragraphs need to meet only the requirement of stating your idea and keeping your reader the loop.
My final metaphor is “Hey Hey Hey and the Textbook Conspiracy: Annotating Your Reading”, this metaphor explains the benefits of writing while you read. When you make notes in the margin of the text your reading or all over the page you are fully processing and analyzing what you are reading. It enhances your reading and you become a better writer if you are able to sort out the most important things in the text you are reading. My freshman year of high school my teacher always nagged the class to annotate while we read and I remember hating it because it does require more work and time. After not annotating for multiple passages and books we read, I came to the conclusion that it easier to annotate now while reading then having to go back and reread the entire passage because you forgot the key points.
Works Cited
Reid, E. Shelley. “Ten Ways To Think About Writing: Metaphoric Musings for College Writing Students.” Ed. Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. Vol. 2. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor P, 2011. 3-23. Writing Spaces. Web. 17 Feb. 2016.
