The story of how I published two blog posts in my final writing course at IUPUI
Gutkind, Lee. “What’s the Story #24/25.” What’s the Story #24/25 | Creative Nonfiction, Creative Nonfiction, 2004.
Matt Barton, Matt, et al., editors. “Writing Spaces Web Writing Style Guide Version 1.0.” Writing Spaces Web Writing Style Guide Version 1.0, 2011.
Stubbs, Jacob. “Habits That Will Lead to Success in College, Pt. 1.” Impact Christian Fellowship at IUPUI. Impact, 30 Mar. 2017. Web. 20
Writing Nonfiction: Popular and Professional Publication has enabled me to publish one blog post (and soon two blog posts) that can be accessed by any employer if they want to see examples of the type of work I can do. However, I know that other students have a larger portfolio. Thus, one of my goals is to find an internship in the near future in which I can create more work to add to my portfolio. One of the great fears I had when I chose English as my major is not being able to find a job that I enjoy and pays well. Many consider writing to be an impractical field that doesn’t need to be studied. In the many years I’ve gone to college part-time, many of my friends and family members have asked many of the same questions again and again. What am I studying in college? When will I be done with college? What do I plan to do with my major? When I say I’m studying English, they, almost universally, ask,
“Do I want to be a teacher?”
This, honestly, became rather irritating because I was never too sure about what I would become after I finished college and because everyone outside the field of writing seems to be unaware of how diverse the writing field is.
Becoming a professor was what I wanted to become when I first entered college. Yet, throughout my time in college, my career goals have changed significantly. My success and struggles in my college courses have revealed what my strengths, weaknesses, and interests are. After considering the position of a writing professor, I considered becoming a technical writer, and then an editor. All of these positions have proven to be more difficult than I initially thought. Even though I’ve excelled in most of my writing courses, I’m still not sure of what type of writing career I can go into. I prefer writing over editing, and within the field of writing, I’m better at nonfiction than fiction, even though I’m fascinated by both. I enjoy writing about religion, theology, and history. Yet, in what type of career can I write about those topics? What type of writing career can provide me with enough money to live independently and provide for a future family? I’m nervous about the next steps I’ll have to take in my life. Yet, I’m praying to God for his guidance.
What was most surprising about publishing my blog posts was how easy the publishing process was. I thought that publishing any type of writing was a fairly long process, yet it was actually quick and easy. On March 22, I submitted my first blog post. On April 31, Andrew Hodges sent me an email telling me that he published my blog post online. I was pleased by how my post turned out, except for the fact that Mr. Hodges put my post in the category of Campus Citizen. I emailed him about this, but when I told Mrs. Donhardt about it, she told me that tagging Campus Citizen onto my post could get it more publicity. But Mr. Hodges told me he thought I was writing for the Campus Citizen and removed the Campus Citizen tag anyway.
When I drafted my blog post and submitted it to Mrs. Donhardt, she told me my post was good overall. She said she liked my rhetorical decision to use a passage of scripture to lead into each strategy for success. But she suggested that I make several edits, mostly to the post’s length and focus. Even though I thought I reduced the size of the post, she told me it was too long and I needed to cut it in half. There were a few other edits she suggested I make as well. For example, she asked about my reference to a professor calling college one of the biggest “hassles” Americans have to experience in their lives. The professor that made that statement was referring to how it’s much easier to go to college in other countries. Because I forgot some of what he said in the conversation, I decided to completely remove my reference to his comment from my post. After I sent the post to her several more times, I eventually prepared a post that both of us eventually thought was fit for publication.
I began writing my post. It took several days for me to complete. Since I was talking about my own life, the writing process I went through was simple. I didn’t even create a detailed outline. I wrote a list of at least seven habits I’ve had throughout college that I thought were important for students to have. As I did this, I thought about events in my life in which these habits helped me reach some type of goal I had throughout my time in college. Because I could foresee that my post would be too long, I cut the list down to four habits that I thought were the most important. I decided to write about making organization a priority, finding a support group, persevering through hardships, and remaining faithful to God. I ultimately composed a blog post that was well over a thousand words long.
Here is a sample of the post’s introduction,
“I’m almost there. Praise God, I’m almost there! After years of reading textbooks, taking tests, writing essays, listening to lectures, talking with advisors, and interacting with students from all over the world, I’ll finally be able to experience the joy of graduating from college” (Stubbs).
Kathryn Evans’ chapter “What is Genre and How Can It Help You” said that when you’re writing for any organization you should make great effort to understand how the organization your writing for communicates in their publications. When Andrea Davis, a former editor for the Indianapolis Business Journal, came to speak with my class about her writing career, she told me to research as much as I can about the blog I was writing for. I researched the blog posts by reading seven of them. In my research, I identified several types of blogs Impact members create. Some blogs are studies of the Bible. Some are personal testimonies. Others are meant to be inspirational. I also discovered there were only a few conventions Impact’s posts abide by. These conventions were spelled out in the written agreement the president of Impact, Haley Welch, made with me.
In that agreement, she said that Impact’s posts must have a minimum of five hundred words. But there’s no maximum. The topics Impact members choose to focus on are their choice. Knowing this information helped me determine how long my post should be. Since a few students gave personal testimonies, I decided to devote my post to revealing different habits I’ve had in college that have helped me excel in my courses. This freedom to choose whatever I wanted to write about is what I liked the most about this project.
When I read Lee Gutkind’s “The Creative Nonfiction Police” I was reminded that it’s sometimes difficult to tell the truth and, at the same time, tell an engaging story. Gutkind talks about a time when he worked on a project that required him, and an editorial board, to work with attorneys to figure out what could and could not be said about a case he was writing about. He said the reason writing about that case was difficult is because he, and the writers that worked with him, had to create a “strong wall of protection against litigation” that didn’t result in creating a fictional story. This is how he describes that case:
“Our editorial board had to work with attorneys to determine what could be said about this dicey debate between a patient and her doctors, what names and places could be legitimately disguised and what names and places should be omitted. The danger here, of course, was building such a strong wall of protection against litigation by disguising detail that the essay becomes what the writer has been trying to avoid: fiction” (Gutkind).
Gutkind’s article made me consider what I should and shouldn’t reveal about my personal life in my blog post. Nothing in my posts is untrue. Yet there were times when I thought about what I should and shouldn’t reveal about my personal life without presenting an inaccurate picture of it.
The style guide that Barton, Kalmach, and Lowe edited, Web Writing Style Guide, says this about web writing:
“The one thing you never want to see in your web pages—whether on your blog, your wiki, or your own website—are grey pages with nothing but text: no links, no headlines, no images” (Barton, Kalmach, and Lowe).
This information compelled me to refrain from including any links or images because they’re weren’t necessary for the type of posts I was writing. Yet I did include headlines to help my readers easily navigate through my post, which is actually rather short.
When my classmates and I were all assigned to write a work of nonfiction and get it published, I considered writing about two subjects I’m deeply interested in: religion and history. I didn’t have any stories to write about. But I considered several organizations I could write for. Because I only reached out to three organizations, this process wasn’t too recursive.
The first organization I thought about was a Christian humanitarian organization called the Malawi Project. The Malawi Project is devoted to providing humanitarian aid to the African country of Malawi. The co-founder of the Malawi Project, Richard Stevens, was the client I worked with in my Visual Technical Communication course. He said he would be willing to work with me again. I emailed him to ask for his assistance, yet, because he has such a busy schedule, he never responded.
I then contacted IUPUI’s Department of history. I thought about writing a history essay, and I looked for organizations online that were looking for history essays to publish. When I reached out to the department of history, I contacted the department chair, Didier Gondola. When he responded, he told me to contact Modupe Labode, the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Yet after I contacted her, I never got a response.
This lack of response from two organizations I reached out to was the only real challenge I faced as I did this project, and was they only aspect of this project that I didn’t like.
I also thought about two Christian magazines: the Gospel Advocate and the Christian Chronicle, which are two magazines associated with the church I’m a member of: the Church of Christ. I had a subscription to Gospel Advocate years ago, and I’ve skimmed through many of the Christian Chronicle’s articles. I thought of writing a story about how my congregation is affecting the community of Fishers. Yet I never sent them a story pitch because I thought I would be more successful if I contacted a student organization.
As one of the student guest speakers who spoke to us at the beginning of the semester said, there is a large number of student organizations we could write for. Therefore, I went to the Division of Student Affairs, on IUPUI’s website, and as I searched through the list of religious and spiritual organizations, I found a student organization called Impact at IUPUI. I went to Impact’s website, found out about Impact’s mission, and read about Impact’s student leaders.
This is what Haley Welch, Impact’s student president, says about Impact’s mission:
“Our mission, as stated on our website, is as follows: We exist to pursue, model and teach intimacy with God at IUPUI, in Christian community” (Welch)
I then contacted Impact’s Lead Campus Minister, Andrew Hodges, because his contact information was the only contact information I could find. I told him I wanted to write a story about Impact for the Campus Citizen and gave him a list of questions I developed that I asked him to answer. When he responded, he said he would be honored to have me write about Impact in the Campus Citizen. But he told me he would prefer if one of Impact’s five student leaders answer my questions because they have a better perspective that he does as a campus minister. The president of Impact Christian Fellowship, Haley Welch, replied to my email on February 14 and answered my questions. Here are the questions:
What impact is Impact making on campus?
Will Impact host any significant events that will take place in the future?
Has Impact recently gone through any significant changes?
Does Impact have any publications I could write for?
Haley Welch told me Impact has what they call Nights of Worship and Service Nights. During Nights of Worship, Impact meets with students in Taylor Hall once a month, in room 104, to talk about the Bible and how to apply it to their life as college students. During service nights, it seems, they do community outreach. They also have a blog they update once a month. But they would like to update it more often.
I then asked Mrs. Donhardt about writing an article in the Campus Citizen about Impact’s Service Night with Kids Inc., which occurred on March 10. I also told her about Impact’s student blog. She told me she didn’t think Impact’s Service Night with Kids Inc. was enough of a story. Thus, she suggested I write blog posts for Impact’s blog. I then emailed Haley Welch and told her I would like to write two blog posts, one in March and another in April. I also asked her, as Mrs. Donhardt suggested, if we could agree on the topics, the deadline, and word count of each post.
Before I took Writing Nonfiction: Popular and Professional Publication with Professor Tracy Donhardt, two of the main classes I took that prepared me for my project were TCM 35000 Visual Technical Communication and W365 Theories and Practices of Editing. In the spring of 2016, I took Visual Technical Communication with Marjorie Hovde. This course prepared me to work with a client. I learned from this course to find out when is the best time and what is the best way to communicate with my client as soon as possible. The experiences I had with my client in Visual Technical Communication helped keep me wary of how I interacted with my client in my nonfiction writing course.
The other course that prepared me was the Theories and Practices of Editing course I took with J.J. Stenzoski in the fall of 2016. This course helped me refresh and expand my knowledge of grammar and showed me that if I’m ever editing anyone’s work, including my own, I need to pay extra attention to every detail of their work. My editing in Writing Nonfiction: Popular and Professional Publication was rather easy, since I was editing my own work and my professor suggested I make only a few edits. Yet I think refreshing my knowledge of grammar in Theories and Practices of Editing is what helped make my editing easier than it would have been if I didn’t take that course.
The End of the Beginning 