Justin Kluger

Writing 2

Dear Eugene,

Throughout this quarter, I have learned so much about writing and thus greatly

improved my writing skills. I have both improved my skills when it comes to the

formatting and the technical side, but also now see a whole other side of writing where I

need to understand my audience and how they will read and understand my work.

Reading the article “How to Read Like a Writer” changed my viewpoint when it came to

how I should read and how my writing would be read. The article showed me that I

should read to understand how the piece was put together rather than just for the

content. This made me a better reader, and also realize that when writing, I should put a

better focus on my writerly choices and the content will come in naturally (Bunn).

Throughout the rest of this reflection letter, I will go into more detail on my strengths and

weaknesses in writing and the effects this course had on them.

My main strength in writing is my creativity. The two projects we were assigned

both really allowed me to show my creativity off in full effect since they were genre

translations where some sort of academic writing was translated into a completely

different genre. In the first project, I translated an academic article about social media

influencer’s self disclosure into a TMZ article. I made up both of the stories within the

TMZ article all on my own and was super proud of how they turned out. One story was

about Bryce Hall not washing his bedsheets which ended up being a little bit funny and

the other story was about Charli D’amelio spitting in Logan Paul’s face. Both of these

stories were super random and I was proud of myself for being able to make them up

and put them into words in the style of a TMZ article. Also they both fit the genre well

1
Justin Kluger
Writing 2
since they were about celebrity gossip and self disclosure. In the second project I made

a reddit post that also allowed me to show off my creativity. In this project, I took six

academic articles and had the authors of each one have a conversation in Reddit about

writer’s block. I thought that this was a perfect genre to translate the articles into since it

showed the conversation the authors were having perfectly and even allowed them to

interact with one another. While it was not as creative as the first project, I was still

allowed a lot of freedom when it came to picking the genre and the way the writers

themselves conversed. This project would not have been without the article “Writing

About Writing”, where I learned about creating a research space and how I should

interpret different academic articles interacting with each other like walking into a party

and listening to a conversation between people. These ideas helped me better use my

creativity to write a good conversation in the Reddit post I made.

My greatest weakness when it comes to writing is making sentences that flow

well and adding in content. I feel like I often find myself not meeting page or word

counts since I am far too focused on just answering questions as quickly as possible

rather than taking my time to really make solid writing. Because of this, my writing will

often come out super choppy and not flow too well. The two projects we did in this class

taught me to better use my strength of creativity addressed earlier and make good

flowing writing. Instead of just making a genre translation as fast as I could, I wrote in

genres I use and am interested in so I could really flesh out my writing and let my

creativity flow. After finishing my writing, I used Taczak’s ideas about reflection to polish

up my writing. He says that writing helps writers assess themselves as writers and build

on their knowledge about writing. This helped me understand that I should re-read and

2
Justin Kluger
Writing 2
really think about my writing to see the decisions I made and even change some up to

make my writing better. These reflections will help me implement my successful

techniques and eliminate my failures for my future writing projects (Taczak).

Overall, this class has helped me improve my writing significantly and I feel like a

completely new writer. If I had more time, I would continue to work on my reflection to

make my writing the best it could possibly be. I am excited to use the skills I have

learned this quarter throughout the rest of my academic career. Thank you so much for

an amazing class Eugene!

Sincerely,

Justin Kluger

3
Justin Kluger
Writing 2
Sources:

Bunn, Mike. “How to Read Like a Writer.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 2,
edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, Anderson, South Carolina, Parlor Press,
2011.

“Chapter 3. Participating in Conversational Inquiry About Writing.” Writing About Writing, Fourth
Edition, edited by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2020

Taczak, Kara. “Reflection is Critical for Writers’ Development.” Naming What We Know:
Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, Classroom Edition, edited by Linda
Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle, Logan, Utah State University Press, 2016.