Reference no: EM133484101
Describe and critically examine your own practice, identity and authenticity as a writer. You might consider one or more of the following points to prompt your essay:
1. How do you inscribe yourself in a text?
2. What role/s do you fulfill as the author and narrator in relation to the topic you are writing about?
3. How do you represent your right to speak on the subject you are writing about?
To illustrate and explore this topic, you can refer to your own writing practice (including at university), or to writing you've done in your professional life. Demonstrate your understanding of authorial identity in writing.
Please remember that critical and analytical skills are being assessed in this essay. This means that while you are encouraged to use personal pronouns (e.g., "I") in the essay and to use your own writing practice as your case study, don't forget to also think critically about the behaviours you are documenting.
The essays are usually very personal, often all the way through the entire essay, especially if the student is a creative writer and therefore are writing about their experience authoring short stories/poems/ personal essays etc. They will provide short examples of their poetry/stories etc, and explain how they attempt to maintain authenticity as the generator of new creative material, whether they are influenced by particular personal or political agendas, what audience and/or publication they feel they are writing for (i.e. what are the authorising networks that influence their writing?), etc.
Alternatively, those who written texts that they have produced in the workplace, where they often discuss reports and technical documents, provide short examples from their work and describe their writer role as requiring (for example) objectivity, clarity, the need for thoroughness and accuracy, etc. This latter group will usually explain that they always in the 3rd person (i.e. they have no role as an 'I' in the professional documents they produce). They will identify the authorising networks within their workplace and the intended purpose and audience of these texts, etc.
Other students use one or two of their previous university assignments (that involve written text) as their examples of their work as an author, and provide brief quotes from these to demonstrate: their role as author in relationship to the purpose, content and intended audience/readers of the text, the need for them to demonstrate the research they've done when preparing the text (i.e. establishing authenticity of the content), and how they use this research to underpin the claims or conclusions they come to in their assignments (i.e. establishing credibility).
Self Reflection Part in the essay below:
Students discuss each of these aspects of their role as writer in their particular field (i.e. they are an employee undertaking professional writing tasks in the workplace OR they are a student writer undertaking a qualification OR they are a creative writer etc), they need to relate these to the concepts mentioned in some of the lectures/readings for the first four weeks - e.g. how do they as writers and their intended readers seek truth and authenticity in the texts they produce? (covered in week 1); what is the relationship between author (i.e. the student), the text that they discuss and the particular target reader/s (covered in week 2); what roles do the intended readers play and does this impact the content and purpose of their writing (covered in week 3); what are the authorising networks influencing the student's written work, e.g. lecturers who mark university assessments, workplace managers who request written documents, publishers who publish creative work (covered in week 4).