Erin

Workman
Dr. Yancey
Everyday Writing
24 November
Traces of Everyday Writing Ecologies

The process of composing my ePortfolio has reminded me of all the writing that I doand
have doneeveryday since the time that I learned to write. As I assembled course texts
around and over the zine I recently made, I saw new connections between the concepts
weve discussed in everyday writing and actual practices in which Ive engaged long before
this course. In this reflection on everyday writing Ill discuss the five key terms introduced
in my key terms glossarymundane, ecologies, circulation, genre, and networkin
relation to our course texts, and Ill conclude by considering future directions for studying
everyday writing as raised by the process of composing my ePortfolio.

As I state in the introduction to my ePortfolio, everyday writing is defined differently
depending on the framework within which it is viewed. However, most everyday writing
scholars seem to agree on two key points: 1) that everyday writing is mundane, often to
the point of invisibility (Lillis 76; Barton and Papen), and 2) everyday writing is central to
how societies operate and to the ways individuals relate to each other and to institutions
(Barton and Papen 7). As an FYC teacher, I see this every semester when I ask my students
about the writing that they do, and they list only school-based writing; in other words, they
fail to see that the writing they do everyday is writing. As a new Masters student, I had a
similar experience with my pedagogy professor. During our first meeting, Pat said, Your
writing is very strong. How did you become such a good writer?, and I replied (as someone
not at all familiar with composition studies might), Wellmy 10th
grade teacher focused a lot on grammar. No, no! Thats not it at
all, Pat exclaimed. Did you read a lot growing up? I replied that I
didthat I read all the time, and we stopped there, satisfied that it
was the reading that had done the important work of developing my
writing skills. While I wouldnt contest that claim, I would add to it: I

Magna Doodle P hone

Cover

wrote all the time. I wrote songs, poems, short stories, lists, letters, notes, and I wrote on
whatever material was available, including my magna doodle phone, books, and walls. Like
my FYC students, I did not think of this writing as writing because it was mundane. Because
it had become routine. And because routinization renders actions invisible (and
unavailable for reflection and critique).

For me, this routinization is key to understanding everyday writing: I contend that the
familiar becomes routinized through both repetition and circulation of texts, a process
which enables genres to emerge and networks to (re)form. I began this line of thought in
my All the Frameworks SRR when I state, Publics are formed and maintained through
the circulation of texts (R&W, H&M), as are institutions (R&W), social movements (H&M),
and social spaces (Ackerman). Likewise, individuals (re)compose identities through
literacy practices as they move between social spaces, navigate institutions, participate in
counter/publics, and effect change. We see this most explicitly in Yanceys discussion of
Mary and the Crusaders. Mary utilizes writing because writing enacts her network of
relationships and keeps her connected to her past (3). Working first with penny postcards
(4), Mary and the Crusaders soon transition to letters (4-5), and letters become
newslettersmixed-up letters (5)as the network continues to grow. We can see this as
well in the zine community as the circulation of zines enabled new genres to emergegrrrl
zines, perzines, scene zinesand geographically-dispersed individuals to become
networked through the cultivation of shared identities, values, and practices. Most
importantly, these genres and networks exist both within and across ecologies of everyday
writing.

Everyday writing, from my perspective, can be defined as mundane texts that circulate to
(re)from genres and networks within and across ecologies. Ive arrived at this
understanding through the work of my case studies, both of which have revealed to me the
importance of ecologies for everyday writing. For instance, as I noted in my case study on
my great-grandmothers (Bessie) composition book, much of her writing was used to
organize her lifeas in her address book, shopping lists, and financial logsor to
document her lifeas in her diary entries and log of correspondence. Reading the

composition book, one gets the impression that Bessie did not intend to circulate this
writing to others; rather, she used these writing practices as a kind of memory-work to
help her keep track of personal details of friends and family that she might forget as her
Alzheimers progressed. Alternatively, Truckface #16 transcends the personal/social divide
in that LB (the author) composes short narratives based on her personal experiences as a
way of making sense of these experiences both for herself and for others. Whereas my
great-grandmother wrote for herself, LB is clearly writing for both herself and others, a
point which becomes clearer when we view these texts as part of an ecology.

Whats interesting about the composition book is that it provides evidence of its operating
within an ecology: the correspondence log points to the existence of letters, the shopping
list points to the existence of recipes, and the arithmetic points to financial transactions.
However, we cannot see this ecology; we can only see its traces. LBs zine, on the other hand,
points to its existence within different kinds of ecologies, many of them school-based.
Reading the zine, we can see that LB writes lesson plans, assignment sheets, comments on
student work, and emails to students and colleagues. She also describes her participation in
the Chicago Teachers Strike, which points to her participation in resistant vernacular
rhetorics. Likewise, the zine itself operates within an ecology of resistant vernacular
rhetorics by providing a view from below on an event widely covered by dominant media
sources. The zine is self-published, advertised on popular zine distros and LBs (bands)
tumblr, and offered as incentive to people who might donate money via a fundraising
website. Thus, LBs zine moves outside of her individual ecology of writing, working to
form a network of readers similarly invested in resisting state and federally mandated
curricula.

Though I cannot generalize based on these two case studies, I would like to further explore
ecologies of everyday writing, particularly as they intersect with transfer studies. These
case studies have helped me to see that writing always operates within an ecologyif not
multiple ecologieseven if we can only see traces of those ecologies, and that creating a
binary between in-school and out-of-school writing is not only impossible (as Prior and

Shipka and Roozen have already demonstrated), it is counterintuitive to the Teaching for
Transfer (TFT) model. Ill use my ePortfolio composing process and product as an example.

I knew that I wanted to create an ePortfolio that remediates a zine because my personal
interests have recently turned toward this direction. Ive spent the past year learning more
about zines and zine culture through building my own zine library and reading scholarship
on zines (particularly grrrl zines). My ePortfolioa school-based genrereflects these
interests and draws explicitly on extant zines, both my own and others. For instance, the
cover design and key terms glossary are appropriated from Everyday Magic (featured on
my ePortfolio materials page), the introduction page design is copied from my own zine
Write Now!and the remaining pages assemble course texts alongside and on top of pages
from Write Now!, with the exception of the reflection page, which is appropriated from my
personal journal. Through assemblage, I have put course texts into conversation with texts
about writing featured in Write Now!. For instance, Everyday Writing as Identity
Constructionmy collaboratively authored blog postis assembled atop my contribution
to Write Now!, which focuses on how writing connects me to others and helps me to hold
onto certain identities. The title for this page is placed in conversation with another
zinesters contribution, which states that Language never leaves and is always there and
its what we share (even if we dont) collectively. This excerpt speaks to the relationship/s
between language, collectivity, and identity construction. Similarly, my first case study is
assembled with a text on the power of literacy (A Dangerous Thing), primarily
demonstrated through a discussion of Frankie Silver. Though the surface content of this
zine text might not seem applicable to my case study, I believe that the message of the zine
text is what counts: as the reader can see at the bottom of the page featuring the case study,
if you are not the author of your own narrative, you can expect that someone else will be.
Just as my case study focuses on the importance of everyday writing for memory-work and
reveals traces of Bessies everyday writing literacy practices, the zine text speaks to the
power of working within ecologies of writing.

Though I believe my ePortfolio is strengthened by my assemblage of everyday writing and
school-based texts, I also see a tension between the two. As a medium, zines draw on

multiple modes to create meaning/s. Though some zines are more alphabetic-text heavy
than others, most zines rely on relationships between layout, color, font type (be this typed
or handwritten), material, images, and so on. School-based writing, on the other hand,
remains largely alphabetic. This tension is evident in the zine, particularly on pages like
SRR 1: Jenny Rice, which attempts to replicate the zine format by using a background of
crumpled paper and a font reminiscent of the typewriter, and All the Frameworks, which
does include images but is primarily alphabetic in nature. As I composed these and the case
study pages, I found myself frustrated with the amount of alphabetic text I was including.
No zine would ever feature this much text, or at least not at this density. Likewise, zines
typically do not include MLA or APA style citations: ideas are attributed to others, but
casually and without quotation. Thus, even though this ePortfolio has enabled me to work
across texts and genres within and across ecologies of writing, it has also limited the texts
networking potentials (in that this remediated zine would not resonate with the grrrl/zine
community).

Going forward, then, I would like to investigate what ecological models of writing can teach
us about transfer between sites, networks, and ecologies. Though I believe that we often
see traces of everyday writing ecologies in students school-based texts, I would like to see
what students can learn by focusing on these traces and making them explicitat least for
themselves. How might assignments that encourage students to assemble or remix texts
from multiple sites, across multiple ecologies, help facilitate the reflective awareness of
writing that is crucial to transfer? How might encouraging students to draw on their
everyday writing as they compose in the TFT classroom help them to develop more robust
theories of writing?