Digital Writing Reflection
At first, when I started WRIT 300 I did not really know what professional digital writing was. I did know that it was a process. Throughout this course, my the definition evolved my perspective on professional writing, and it also changed the process in which I write.
My definition of professional writing evolved because my definition was so elementary. I literally thought that if you were writing on the web that you were writing digitally. I could not have been more wrong. Professional digital writing in all aspects is the same as professional writing except it is done over the web. You have to be strict with yourself, meet deadlines, continuously research and be specific about the words you choose to use all while making sure to convey the message properly so that it is understood the way that you expect.
As a composer of professional digital writing, my process of writing changed because I am also a journalist so my writing was naturally structured to write in the journalistic style. Unfortunately, journalism and professional writing are completely different so I did have to evolve my writing process to conform to the style of professional writing. Although my OKR was ok for the beginning of the course my writing process changed dramatically from that because that OKR was literally set up for journalistic writing and not for professional writing. My writing became more about the writing and details of the writing instead of checking of the facts as it would have been just for journalism. I evolved to create documents that I would literally check words to make sure that it was written to convey the meaning that I wanted to convey rather than to just give people the facts of what has happened or will happen.
I believe that I will continue to use the skills that I learned through my professional career not only as a journalist but also as a writer. I want people not only to read what I write but to understand what I mean to convey when I write it. This course will allow me to be a better writer because I now understand that words are very important to the message that you want to convey and if you use the wrong words it will convey the wrong message thus this class has taught me to pay attention to words use as much as the details and facts of what I write.
The hardest part of the course for me was the group project. Group projects are not easy anyways, but for our group project taking the role of manager was more challenging than I had expected. It made me not only keep on track, but I also had to continually make sure that the other members kept on track too. Then I realized how hard it is to get back on track when you fall behind. Through hard work, we did successfully submit the assignment and our submission was posted on Wikipedia. And the submission is still there.
The group project was also the thing that that taught me the most during the whole course because I learned a lot from that project. I had problem areas that were addressed in the project because with two other people watching me they could critique what I was doing wrong. I learned not to get frustrated when things do not go as planned, but rather to try harder to achieve my goals.
To me, the definition of professional digital writing is a process in which you write a document in order to convey a specific message in the proper way over the web as a medium in a way that it will be understood in the correct way that you (the writer) intended for it to be conveyed by your audience.