A Preliminary Theory of Writing

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Mr. Kilimi simply polished my understanding of good writing into something possible for me to understand and easy to apply. He made me understand that everyone could write through the different class assignments and exams which challenged us. He always appreciated it when we used descriptive language in writing, something that always added fun and imagery to the sample articles he read to us for inspiration. Being an editor, he always read carefully through all the writings of a class of over ninety students and always wrote in our written pieces of work pointing out what he considered important. Reading through his comments on my exam paper always left me changed in the way I write, considering his comments and keeping up with what he considered excellent. This greatly increased my interest in writing and to a greater extent reduced the limited ideology I had about good writers being born that way because there were still good students in the same class with me at writing.

From these experiences, since I was six, I now believe good writing is one that has or creates a connection to the reader while bad writing is one that doesn’t have a clear meaning which is easy to follow and attacks the readers’ values in one way or the other. Good writings are usually characterized by their descriptive nature. They have stories that flow well while reading and they remain with the readers to create a positive impact afterward. However bad writings are normally characterized by mixed-up stories that are hard to follow and connect. As I said earlier on, I recognize good or bad writing by seeing the jumbled stories in the readings, the flow of the story from the start of the book to the end, how the writer chooses her characters and how she distributes roles, and also the predictability of the story in the writing makes it so boring. Good writing is more realistic than what I consider bad writing.

Good writers are those whose writings touch their readers and remain with them while bad writers are those whose writing diverts from the readers’ expectations or interests. When I think of a good writer, I imagine an individual who enjoys their writings and spends a lot of time on their work, one who writes through inspiration to share discovered knowledge with the world. Additionally, whenever I think of a bad writer I imagine a person who writes to earn money from his/her writings and doesn’t spend careful time on his/her work, and doesn’t mind the interest of the readers or any positive impact. Good writers generally reflect a lot about their writings and spend a lot of time on their pieces to ensure that they have a clear meaning. They always seek knowledge, views, and critiques from colleagues and friends before publishing. They proofread their work and research their writing process to ensure that they deliver true content to their readers. On the other hand, bad writers usually invest little time in their work since most of them concentrate on having many books written rather than their impact. So through my process of writing, the theories I kept getting in the different stages of my life have helped me a lot in moving on from one level to another. I first learned how to hold a pencil and be neat while growing up, then I learned the mechanics of grammar in writing and I was temporarily afraid of writing at a certain point in life and I didn’t believe in myself. Now I know that good writing is all about the correct use of grammar in any given language to make sensible meaning to the readers. I as well know writing is not a hard thing and it only takes practice and dedication to improve and become better at it. Writing is the process of composing text from our thoughts to the world, and this means everyone can write since all this originates and comes from our thoughts and brains which we all have! Though some writers are born with special creativity, they still undergo training and repeated practice to become great writers. This completely shows that great writers or leaders are self-made. If we are dedicated to becoming great writers, amidst all the rejections and challenges, we will surely become the good writers I described above. I believe these are the ones who make great writers in life: writers who not only write through inspiration but write to inspire.

Reflection for the Preliminary Theory of Writing.

According to EnglishClub.com, the world’s premier free educational website for learners + teachers of English, writing is the process of using symbols (letters of the alphabet, punctuation, and spaces) to communicate thoughts and ideas in a readable form. It is not as easy as it sounds in the definition because many people have tried it and given up because of various reasons. What stands out for me is the ideology of “that isn’t for me” because some people do it better than you. I was once that person who believed writing was for the talented, those who were naturally born writers but this killed the writer in me for one year before I realized I was wrong.

Many of you are probably in the same pit I was in by then but the one thing you should know is writing is all about what is in our minds, because we simply compose text from our thoughts and brains. However, this is only possible if we eliminate the thinking of “that isn’t for me” and the doubts in us. I learned to always have a free mind. What has changed is my perceptions of a bad writer when I said “... Additionally, whenever I think of a bad writer I imagine a person who writes to earn money from his/her writings...” which is not the case to me now because most writers need to earn from their writing to enable them to continue to write and manage their families, so interest in earning money does not make one a bad writer. Following a Preliminary Theory of Writing which I did earlier about my theories of writing, I have researched my processes and practices and then compared them to those of professional writers and my peers.

The purpose of this research is to find out the best time of the day for writers to write, and how this time affects the quality of their writing pieces either negatively or positively. You might wonder why most writers write either early in the morning, or late in the evening and what drives them to have pages of great work. The methods I used to collect data from a class of 19 students for about two and half weeks were: I researched my processes and practices of writing.

My peers and I as a class kept a practice log where we all took notes on our practices and processes using Google documents where a color-coding format was used to ease access of data by everyone who needed it. We then created a google form to track data on some of the practices and get graphs but it, unfortunately, didn’t work out as we expected. We then changed from google forms and created a Google sheet to provide easily quantifiable data.

I read different articles by professional writers about their practices and processes of writing using a google document we created in our different groups. Which made everything to ensure that correct data was being recorded by fellow peers. This data was easily obtained with the help of the color-coding format that allows one to find and understand the collected data. I then chose a theme of “time of the day when I write,” to compare it with that of my fellow peers and the professional writers. I did this by looking at the already highlighted information in a specific color concerning time, I looked at the sheets that showed visible raw data which is very reliable having collected it by myself using 19 members of my class and a few professional writers in a virtual setting.