“Art is an explosion!”, Deidara, a villain in the famous anime Naruto, would say. However, when you think about coherent and well-thought writings, I could say the same. Different genres of writing are different interdisciplinary kinds of writing. They’re a collaboration of words carefully assembled and stitched together in various different ways to demonstrate the many different purposes of writings. The explosion in this art is different words. Each author, or even each writer, no matter young or old, subconsciously uses specific words to evoke specific feelings in their audience, with the help of this word bomb. But how is this word bomb developed? The answer is easy, planning. Without the correct planning, and deepened thought, and through process many writers, such as I, have come up with various ways of brainstorming in order to not develop writer’s block the moment you start writing. In order to write efficiently, and plan correctly, one has to know the rhetorical situation. Without this, one would be lost and not writing for the purpose one is intended to write. Writing is like ballet. You have to express to the audience the purpose of your performance without saying it, but rather with the right movements and the right emotions conveyed through those movements; but rather than movements you convey these emotions in a very certain word bomb.

I never particularly liked to write in English. English is my second language and identifying more with math and science, my time spent on English has always been rather scarce. Most of my English classes seemed like a waste of time to me. I was engaged in the classroom and engaged in my writings, or so I thought. My first semester in college I took FIQWIS, a freshman seminar writing class. All that excitement started to leak when essay after essay, paper after paper, I was faced with a grade I never understood. “You’re so engaged in class, but we don’t see it in your writing.”, my late professors would say, but I only heard: “Not good enough”. I never understood what was wrong. I never understood what I had to improve. I would just stay in school for hours just staring at my laptop screen, trying to be better, write better, but all I came up with was “trash compared to what you show in class”, the comments kept coming and I lost all hope and stopped trying. There was no planning, no trying, just zeros across the board. That’s how I failed my first ever class in my academic career. I am a strong believer in constructive criticism, nobody is perfect, but with criticism, one can improve. So that’s what I did. I took their criticism and used it for the better. 

I started to plan out my work more. I started to think “Why am I writing this?” “Why is this important to me?”, and with that I figured out the perfect way to brainstorm. I imagine my writing as a ballet performance. I start to think like a dance instructor. I am in total control of my writing, all the words are going to be there for a reason. The reason being, showing the purpose of my writing. I started to revise my drafts more, started to seek out synonyms to find the perfect word that describes the moment I am looking for. Ballet has a specific way of counting: one-and, two-and, three-and, four-and, five-and, six-and,- seven-and, eight-and. Each component has a dance move or a specific pose in which dancers don’t just stand still, they start to extend their muscles to make their pose last long and make a statement. I try to incorporate that in my writings. Each word is there to support my stance, to elongate by the depth of thought and drive my thought through until the end. 

A ballet performance, however,  isn’t accomplished in a day. Revision after revision, retake after retake is happening in order to show a well-polished performance. In my case, draft and draft is being written. I look through my writings, looking for that pose that isn’t being expressed enough; seeking out the word that doesn’t support the stance I am demonstrating. I revise and erase, and in the process conclude to the type of tone I am writing in. The tone is dance, is the music I am dancing to. The tone of my writing goes hand in hand with the genre I am publishing my work in. The genre is the component that pulls the audience in. The genre is the type of dance you are dancing. Is it classic? Modern? Narrative? Review? The language you use follows and needs to be adjusted to the audience you are trying to reach. Why would you write on a doctoral level if you are trying to reach children in first grade? Why would you compose a modern dance and add people who have never danced modern in your performance? Every performance, every writer needs the right components in order to reach your audience, and the medium in which you write will deliver the right idea. In dance, the medium would be holding a performance of the Royal Ballet in an old warehouse. It just sounds wrong for the medium isn’t right. The medium for the Royal Ballet would be for example the Royal Opera House. You need the right medium for the right genre. 

Writing an informative report won’t be seen as serious if you start writing biased, and an argumentative piece of writing won’t seem persuasive if you defend both sides without choosing a stance.

Retaking this English class has given me confidence in my writing if not anything else. I realized that if I know all the answers to the nine rhetorical terms, I should be able to write a decent and well-developed essay or paper. English 110 has helped me find the right way to revise my work and has helped me be more patient with myself and my writings. Not everything can be accomplished in a day. I was able to fully understand the meaning behind writing with the help of my professor and achieved my first 90 in college English. This class helped me overcome many worries I accumulated last semester and was a class that really brought me into the ‘This is really college feeling’, a feeling I didn’t feel since I started in the Fall of 2019. When I now compare my work to that of last year, I can see a more brought together piece of work. Many times I now compare my writing to ballet, especially now after composing my Theory of Writing, I also concluded that although English isn’t my strongest subject nor my first language I can achieve good writing with the right ingredients just like a recipe.

Writing is an art. An art we are all capable of developing. It enables everyone to have a voice even when you think you don’t. Words can’t just be erased like that, they stay with you in your brain, especially when the words are stitched together to be a catchy phrase. Writing isn’t restricted to anyone. This makes it such an important talent because everyone has it with the right help. The process to develop this art in a coherent way is the challenge. Everyone can stitch words together to make sentences, but other people can stitch words together to produce a story that evokes something within a person reading this story, the audience. This process takes time and commitment, a commitment not many have. I like to believe I have that commitment when I write and try to carry that commitment to different places in my life. I will commit to other subjects in which I struggle by brainstorming just as I do in my writings. I will look at it just like the ballet performance. Developing a coherent and synchronized wave of movements that are there for a reason, not just because I wanted them to be there. This ending, however, will end like the ballet Swanlake, there is no true ending, I can still develop and evolve in my writing and in the process of developing my work in other compartments of my life.

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