Week 10 notes and reflection

Summary: While reading “How to Read Like a Writer” the article mentions how to read like a writer and explains what it means to read like a writer or why learn to read like a writer. It says to dig deep into what you are reading, examine it and look for techniques. Read to learn about writing and to future out how the piece was put together and not just read to better understand the piece and what it is about. Try to figure out the over all structure that little by little. When you get further into the text try to find out if the author did anything different or changed up something in the text.

Commentary:  “..and by islands, I mean paragraphs” was an article that was very complicated to follow and understand. I feel if you took like to really figure out why is was laid out in that format and why the author wanted it to change paragraphs every time you click on a different island. It talks about various different islands but the thing that suck out to me more was how to figure out which pharaoh went to which island when they are changing all the time. To be able to read like a writer you need to pick little pieces of what you are reading and try to figure out how it was put together. In class when we bring rough drafts in to have other classmates look over them we pick little parts of our essay and critique it. Pick out little sentences and make them better. I feel that is a way to read like a writer, take your time and think outside the box.

Connections: The article stated “Instead of reading for content or to better understand the ideas in the writing (which you will automatically do to some degree anyway), you are trying to understand how the piece of writing was put together” (Rettberg, 72). When we were looking at “..and by islands, I mean paragraphs” it was a very thoughtful post and made us readers think about it a lot. Think about how it was put together and the paragraphs can change and it makes us think more about where to go after you read one paragraph. It was a very unique article. I wouldn’t really know what to call it kinda like a post with someone pictures and writing but the author who made it put a lot of time into it and thought about how they wanted to have it lay out. It also makes us think more about a writer rather than just reading a normal article, we are thinking differently than any other article being read. In the article “How to Read Like a Writer” it talks about how you get caught reading the same thing over and over and that relates to the other article when the paragraphs change you do get stuck re-reading the same paragraph and you may not even realize that you have already read that.