Writing 420
March 10, 2017
If I had to pick a place where it began to fall apart, it was probably the beginning of high school when I stopped writing fanfiction. At 14, I had came to the shocking conclusion that Twilight was maybe not actually the work of fiction that I should be devoting my time to imitating and I abruptly stopped writing parody works, leaving everything on my account on permanent hiatus. (My most sincere apologies to anyone who messaged me to ask when I would be back when the answer was a resounding, “Never.”)
At the time, stopping felt like the best option (Twilight really is not very good and I was certain I was growing out of it), but stopping also meant that I was putting a hard stop to what essentially amounted to all of the writing I was doing outside of school. I’d honestly really enjoyed what I was doing, and, in stopping myself from writing fanfiction, I cut myself off from my main creative outlet. I started to lose all the momentum in my own growth; I lost the joy that I felt with writing and creating and exploring words. While I’d spent the last two years writing purely for the sake of practice, self-expression, and the opportunity to bend my imagination some, I had rather suddenly decided that those reasons for writing weren’t enough to sustain me — not when it meant writing fanfiction.
Unfortunately, in retrospect, I think I’d call this hard stop a mistake — a huge mistake, in fact, that continues to haunt me as I repeatedly try to get back on the proverbial bike. The eight years that followed have been an exercise in rediscovering my motivation to write and relearning and reforming the reasons I write. While I disagree with my 14-year-old self since I know see that there was actually a massive amount of value in writing my fanfiction, the need to really examine why I write spurred a different type of evolution in my writing. In giving myself space to explore different modes of writing, I found that, while writing for the sake of writing and my own enjoyment are important and worthwhile, I also do my best work when I’m writing purposefully for others and when I'm given space to experiment and say what I, personally, want to say.
Discovering that I like writing in different media
Fresh out of high school, one of the first times my writing turned back from a chore into an enjoyable challenge was in the gateway course when we were asked to experiment with different ways of viewing writing. Moving away from the standard 5-page-double-spaced-MLA-format essays I was used to and into something more — open-ended blogging and multimedia writing — gave me a chance to step back from my writing and really look at what I enjoyed about it, and, specifically, why I was enjoying this.
Looking at the blogging I did for the gateway class, I can see now that trying something in a different medium than I was used to was refreshing for me and allowed me to try new approaches to my writing. For one project, I made a blog to document my cooking disasters. Working in Wordpress with gifs and images to support my writing gave me a whole new opportunity to illustrate my points visually rather than simply through prose. Composing my posts in this way made me imagine the stories I was telling in new ways.
Similarly, I took an audio essay class that made me completely rethink how we process oral stories and, by extension, gave me new perspective on how I build narratives and arguments in prose. Thinking about writing in an auditory medium made me completely reconsider how we process stories. The immersive elements that contribute to how we experience news and information and stories when it comes to podcasts and radio pieces made me reconsider my writing and communication style. Not only was I finding that it was important for me to have my own voice (literally and figuratively) in my pieces, but it made me start to refine my own voice into something new. When I’m writing purely in prose now, I still consider the phrasing and voice of the piece more strongly because of the class; I don’t just read my pieces out loud to catch grammar issues and awkward phrasing, but to make sure my pieces sound conversational and like something that I would say. I want my writing to clearly be a piece of work by Sarah that no one could have produced but me, and I also want the Sarah that is presented through the writing to be the person that I want to be. Writing with audio in mind, putting my mouth where my words were so to speak, made me heavily consider who I want to be within the space of my writing.
Discovering that I like writing for a real-world purpose
Another thing I found was that, while I enjoy writing in a way that feels like I’m being myself, there is something to be said for versatility in writing and, so long as what I’m writing feels meaningful, I’m willing to write however I need to in order to say what needs to be said in a convincing manner. The writing for new media course in particular turned into a great example of this since it was focused on helping non-profits. It was one of the first times that my writing felt useful, impactful, and necessary, and where writing using a more professional tone felt necessary and explicable. Doing writing that wasn’t just for a grade or to demonstrate to a professor that I’d paid attention, but rather to throw my weight behind a homeless shelter that needed help getting the word out about their needs and goals for the community was incredibly enjoyable, and I felt driven and motivated to make the writing as high quality as I could make it. Making a viable social media plan and business assessments that would be used by an actual organization for real world results made me feel like I was levelling up as a writer; I wasn’t just writing for me anymore, but for the sake of others, too. Changing my own voice in my writing made sense to me when I was using it to make the case for others.
Before that class, I’d had a similar experience with the robotics team that I led marketing efforts for in high school. At the time, I figured I enjoyed writing the awards submissions so much because I was surrounded by friends and there was an air of competition surrounding my writing, but I don’t think that’s all there was to it. While the writing was focused around presenting ourselves well to technical judges, it also served to teach the community about what we were working on and why it mattered. The papers I was writing were being used as press advisories, content for brochures and business plans, and educational tools at our events. It’s only retrospectively that I can see the connection between the enjoyment I was drawing from my writing and the potential it had to make an impact in the world, but they were pretty inextricably linked, even back then — I just wasn’t as aware of it as a motivator as I am now.
Discovering that I like writing what I most want to write
Once upon a time, this might have meant fanfiction. I had the full freedom to write what I wanted in the way that I wanted to write it without anyone looking over my shoulder to structure it or critique it. Now, I realize that I an find that same freedom in other avenues that can have that same freedom with my writing if I just look in the right places.
Knowing this, it makes sense that my slump started in high school when my writing was at its most constrained. In lieu of doing what I actually wanted (writing things that could make me famous, pushing the limits of what I could create, sleeping more, etc.), I spent most of high school writing things that I, shockingly, did not want to write and did not care about. Assigned essays were dull, the content wasn’t stimulating, and, more than anything, I wasn’t doing self-directed, self-formed work.
The one exception to this was in my science fiction elective course. The teacher was well-known for being flexible and open-minded about what could happen in his classroom, so, when writing a paper that I knew I could churn out in no time flat at that point — a 5-page analysis on the opposite qualities of characters in Frankenstein — I pitched a different concept to the teacher: a comparison of Dr. Frankenstein and the boats in the book to prove that the inanimate objects were more supportive, dedicated, and useful than the worthless scientist. The teacher was skeptical (it was only the first assignment in the class), but gave me the green light.
Writing that paper was the first time I’d laughed (in a non-cynical way) about what I was producing in my entire high school career. I loved that paper: I used it as a writing sample for ages. My teacher loved that paper: he gave me extra credit for surprising him. And, while I hadn’t entirely made the connection at the time, it was the first time I found that writing could still be enjoyable, no matter my subject content, so long as I could write it how I wanted to — and often that entailed making myself laugh somehow.
That narrative continued with my work on the Daily when I was given space every other week to write my own column on whatever I wanted. Nearly every week, “whatever I wanted” turned into, “how can I tell the world about what a disaster I am and make them laugh about it with me?” One of my favorite pieces that I ever wrote was called, “A pocket-sized problem,” in which I just railed against the size of women’s pants pockets. It was the most popular thing I ever wrote for the paper and I still use it for writing samples for jobs. In having the freedom to write exactly what I wanted in the way that I wanted it, including lines like “Here is an alarming statistic that I just made up: Nearly 90 percent of the pockets on pants marketed toward women have suffered from malnourishment to the point of near-extinction. They’re one of the fastest-climbing groups on the endangered list, right after the black rhino and the use of cursive.” I managed to completely untether myself from expectations and enjoy myself in the creation of the article. I created something that I was proud of, something I was willing to put in time and effort into. I don't at all mind having my work looked over by my editor and critiqued so long as, in the end, it's my own words.
Discovering my path
Ultimately, I haven’t returned to writing fanfiction, and I don’t particularly plan to as I have other writing outlets that I enjoy in the same way that I liked that at 13, but I have a different appreciation for that period in my writing career. It gave me unlimited space for practice and experimentation in a medium where I made the rules. In many ways it set me up for greater success in all of the writing that followed — I’d had time to develop my voice, to get some of my worse ideas out of my system, and find what can motivate me.
I started writing in fairly self-focused way, writing purely for my own enjoyment in a format that I was comfortable with, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I’ve evolved in a different direction now. I incorporate new media to tell new stories and pick narratives that are focused on the other rather than the self. I’m excited to see where my evolution brings me next.
Annotated Bibliography
Leeson, Sarah. A House Divided: Meaning Making through Paratexts of House of Cards. Rep. Ann Arbor: Communications 365, 2015. Print.
This was a 12-page textual analysis of the opening of the Netflix series, House of Cards, to show how the elements of the opening prime the viewer for the show. This was one of the largest academic writing undertakings I’d ever attempted, and I wasn’t expecting it to come out well, mostly because it didn’t feel overly impactful to me and I didn’t care too deeply about the topic. I found while writing it though that the prompt was actually extremely open-ended and I could explore it in whatever direction I wanted. Of my more traditional academic papers, this is probably the one that I’m the most proud of since I took the time to decide what aspects of the text I really wanted to delve into. I had quite a bit of freedom to decide what I wanted to talk about and the manner in which I would do it.
Leeson, Sarah. "A Pocket-sized Exercise in Critical Thinking." Michigan Daily [Ann Arbor] 16 Sept. 2015: n. pag. Print.
This was one of the earliest columns I wrote for the Michigan Daily. It was an opinion piece on how women’s pockets on pants are too small and how this defect is actually a ploy by purse manufacturers to sell women more products. While there are places I can point to now that I would change or rephrase if given the chance, the argument I made in it still makes me laugh. Managing to publish a silly conspiracy-style article while still managing to make a point by the end about the Pink Tax was something that I took a great amount of pride in, and it really surprised me that I pulled it off. This was one of the most important steps I took in my writing in finding a balance between comedy and meaning.
Leeson, Sarah. Business Plan and SWOT Analysis for MISSION Ann Arbor. Rep. Ann Arbor: Writing 200, 2016. Print.
This was a 20-page social media plan produced in a group in Writing 200: Writing for New Media on behalf of MISSION Ann Arbor, an organization focused on helping the homeless. By far this piece of writing had the most real and immediate ability of anything I’d produced to make a difference. In explaining clearly what our recommendations were for the organization’s social media outreach, we had the potential to gather more support and awareness to not only the organization but the cause at large. Viewing my writing as a force that could help others in an immediate and life-changing way made me see the potential that I had in my writing to do something much larger than myself, if given the right tools.
Leeson, Sarah. "Fighting Mass Gullibility." Michigan Daily [Ann Arbor] 16 Feb. 2017: n. pag. Print.
This is a more recent column that I wrote for the Michigan Daily. As a contrast to the pocket-focused one, this one became quite serious with very few jokes. I meant for it to be a rather self-deprecating look at how easily I am tricked, but it turned into a much more political look at the spread of fake news and what this could mean for democracy. It was my first real foray into the world of political journalism, and I’m not sure I nailed it, but it was important to me that I start building that ability, too. Making jokes is great, but sometimes there are bigger things that need to be said that a joking tone just can’t accomplish in the same way.
Leeson, Sarah. "Genres Delivered in 30 Minutes or Less (Or Your Writing for Free!)." Blog post. Writing Minor Blog. Sweetland Writing Center, 8 Feb. 2015. Web. 17 Mar. 2017.
This was a short blog post about the genres of everyday items for Writing 220. It was not a particularly memorable or important post out of everything I’ve produced in blogs, but, reading back through it, I can definitely see signs here of me experimenting with multimedia and voice. I made quite a few informal jokes about the trash sitting on my bed which I was using as analysis subjects, and I’d incorporated some gifs to illustrate my points. This was one place that I can point to where I can see my writing changing, throwing off some of the stiffness that academia had tried to tether it with.
Leeson, Sarah. Untouchable: A Personal Narrative. Rep. Ann Arbor: English 325, 2017. Print.
This was.a short personal narrative for English 325 on my dating life. While I was hyper-aware of my grammar in that paper due to the professor’s restrictions, I was still encouraged to make my voice ring through as clearly as I could and, above all, humor and vulnerability were cherished. Humor and vulnerability were what I was ultimately striving to evoke in all of my writing, so that was perfect for me. It was an interesting opportunity to tell a story to others about myself with no call to action or larger point that I was necessarily trying to make about the world like I was accustomed to in my columns. I was back to writing for my own sake in a way like I had with my fanfiction, but it felt different when I was the subject. It felt purposeful to explore myself through writing, and trying to express those findings to others in a coherent way was a unique challenge.
Leeson, Sarah. Video Essay Analysis. Rep. Chicago: DePaul U, 2013. Print.
This was one of the first times that I was able to experiment with multimedia writing in college. This was an analysis I did of a video recording I did of myself telling a personal story for a rhetoric course my freshman year of college. Not only was it strange to be analyzing myself speak, but it forced me to consider how different stories in different media become. I had so many things to focus on in my delivery and how it impacted the rest of the story I was telling that it became overwhelming but thought-provoking. I was certainly used to telling stories aloud, but being forced to take it apart made me rethink how I write stories, too.
Leeson, Sarah. We Did Well: A Twilight Fanfiction. N.p.: FanFiction.net, 2008. N. pag. Print.
This was a 107k word fanfiction that I wrote in 2008. It is not good. I refuse to reread it because I might die of secondhand embarrassment on behalf of my younger self. However, that writing was what made me really start writing with a goal in mind for the first time. I was sharing it with others anonymously rather than letting it live on my hard drive. In sharing it with others, I created expectations for myself about how often and how much I consistently wanted to produce. It’s because of this piece of fiction that I know for sure that i can write that much on one story without giving up on it part way through. The amount of positive reviews I got also served as encouragement for years, even after I’d stopped writing. While I will never share this piece with anyone, I’m not unhappy that it exists.
Leeson, Sarah. "What Do You Know That I Don't?" Audio blog post. Writing 201, 8 Dec. 2016. Web. 17 Mar. 2017.
This was a podcast piece I made for Writing 201: Art of of the Audio Essay. I took a quote from Bill Nye about everyone knowing something that you don’t and ran with it, recording and editing interviews with others about something that they knew that I didn’t. Editing the audio was so much like revising a paper, piecing together the structure of the argument I was making through the sound bytes and clipping the audio to by succinct, but so different at the same time. I had new problems with scripting that I’d never considered, such as how much I was able to trim from my interviewees answers. In prose I would be able to use an ellipse to show that something was missing from the quote, but here there was nothing from stopping me from just cutting away middle parts of speech with no indication that there was anything cut. While I was authentically representing what these people had to say since it was in their words with their own voices, I still had to make sure that what came across was legitimately what they wanted to say. It was a unique challenge in figuring out how to boil down someone else’s words to get what I needed without losing the heart of their own message.
Leeson, Sarah. Why I Write. Rep. Ann Arbor: Writing 220, 2015. Print.
This was a simple, 5-page essay that I wrote for Writing 220 to explore my personal reasons for writing. Much like this essay, it explored who I am as a writer and boiled down my motivation for writing into three main categories of past, present, and future. This paper was actually a great deal of fun since I felt completely at liberty to play with my formatting and work outside of what I was accustomed to from papers with similar prompts and requirements from the past. This was one of the most heavily revised papers I’ve ever produced since I shredded it so many times while exploring what I could make it into. Having that opportunity to figure out exactly how I wanted it to look was a great help in levelling up my writing after that point.
March 10, 2017
If I had to pick a place where it began to fall apart, it was probably the beginning of high school when I stopped writing fanfiction. At 14, I had came to the shocking conclusion that Twilight was maybe not actually the work of fiction that I should be devoting my time to imitating and I abruptly stopped writing parody works, leaving everything on my account on permanent hiatus. (My most sincere apologies to anyone who messaged me to ask when I would be back when the answer was a resounding, “Never.”)
At the time, stopping felt like the best option (Twilight really is not very good and I was certain I was growing out of it), but stopping also meant that I was putting a hard stop to what essentially amounted to all of the writing I was doing outside of school. I’d honestly really enjoyed what I was doing, and, in stopping myself from writing fanfiction, I cut myself off from my main creative outlet. I started to lose all the momentum in my own growth; I lost the joy that I felt with writing and creating and exploring words. While I’d spent the last two years writing purely for the sake of practice, self-expression, and the opportunity to bend my imagination some, I had rather suddenly decided that those reasons for writing weren’t enough to sustain me — not when it meant writing fanfiction.
Unfortunately, in retrospect, I think I’d call this hard stop a mistake — a huge mistake, in fact, that continues to haunt me as I repeatedly try to get back on the proverbial bike. The eight years that followed have been an exercise in rediscovering my motivation to write and relearning and reforming the reasons I write. While I disagree with my 14-year-old self since I know see that there was actually a massive amount of value in writing my fanfiction, the need to really examine why I write spurred a different type of evolution in my writing. In giving myself space to explore different modes of writing, I found that, while writing for the sake of writing and my own enjoyment are important and worthwhile, I also do my best work when I’m writing purposefully for others and when I'm given space to experiment and say what I, personally, want to say.
Discovering that I like writing in different media
Fresh out of high school, one of the first times my writing turned back from a chore into an enjoyable challenge was in the gateway course when we were asked to experiment with different ways of viewing writing. Moving away from the standard 5-page-double-spaced-MLA-format essays I was used to and into something more — open-ended blogging and multimedia writing — gave me a chance to step back from my writing and really look at what I enjoyed about it, and, specifically, why I was enjoying this.
Looking at the blogging I did for the gateway class, I can see now that trying something in a different medium than I was used to was refreshing for me and allowed me to try new approaches to my writing. For one project, I made a blog to document my cooking disasters. Working in Wordpress with gifs and images to support my writing gave me a whole new opportunity to illustrate my points visually rather than simply through prose. Composing my posts in this way made me imagine the stories I was telling in new ways.
Similarly, I took an audio essay class that made me completely rethink how we process oral stories and, by extension, gave me new perspective on how I build narratives and arguments in prose. Thinking about writing in an auditory medium made me completely reconsider how we process stories. The immersive elements that contribute to how we experience news and information and stories when it comes to podcasts and radio pieces made me reconsider my writing and communication style. Not only was I finding that it was important for me to have my own voice (literally and figuratively) in my pieces, but it made me start to refine my own voice into something new. When I’m writing purely in prose now, I still consider the phrasing and voice of the piece more strongly because of the class; I don’t just read my pieces out loud to catch grammar issues and awkward phrasing, but to make sure my pieces sound conversational and like something that I would say. I want my writing to clearly be a piece of work by Sarah that no one could have produced but me, and I also want the Sarah that is presented through the writing to be the person that I want to be. Writing with audio in mind, putting my mouth where my words were so to speak, made me heavily consider who I want to be within the space of my writing.
Discovering that I like writing for a real-world purpose
Another thing I found was that, while I enjoy writing in a way that feels like I’m being myself, there is something to be said for versatility in writing and, so long as what I’m writing feels meaningful, I’m willing to write however I need to in order to say what needs to be said in a convincing manner. The writing for new media course in particular turned into a great example of this since it was focused on helping non-profits. It was one of the first times that my writing felt useful, impactful, and necessary, and where writing using a more professional tone felt necessary and explicable. Doing writing that wasn’t just for a grade or to demonstrate to a professor that I’d paid attention, but rather to throw my weight behind a homeless shelter that needed help getting the word out about their needs and goals for the community was incredibly enjoyable, and I felt driven and motivated to make the writing as high quality as I could make it. Making a viable social media plan and business assessments that would be used by an actual organization for real world results made me feel like I was levelling up as a writer; I wasn’t just writing for me anymore, but for the sake of others, too. Changing my own voice in my writing made sense to me when I was using it to make the case for others.
Before that class, I’d had a similar experience with the robotics team that I led marketing efforts for in high school. At the time, I figured I enjoyed writing the awards submissions so much because I was surrounded by friends and there was an air of competition surrounding my writing, but I don’t think that’s all there was to it. While the writing was focused around presenting ourselves well to technical judges, it also served to teach the community about what we were working on and why it mattered. The papers I was writing were being used as press advisories, content for brochures and business plans, and educational tools at our events. It’s only retrospectively that I can see the connection between the enjoyment I was drawing from my writing and the potential it had to make an impact in the world, but they were pretty inextricably linked, even back then — I just wasn’t as aware of it as a motivator as I am now.
Discovering that I like writing what I most want to write
Once upon a time, this might have meant fanfiction. I had the full freedom to write what I wanted in the way that I wanted to write it without anyone looking over my shoulder to structure it or critique it. Now, I realize that I an find that same freedom in other avenues that can have that same freedom with my writing if I just look in the right places.
Knowing this, it makes sense that my slump started in high school when my writing was at its most constrained. In lieu of doing what I actually wanted (writing things that could make me famous, pushing the limits of what I could create, sleeping more, etc.), I spent most of high school writing things that I, shockingly, did not want to write and did not care about. Assigned essays were dull, the content wasn’t stimulating, and, more than anything, I wasn’t doing self-directed, self-formed work.
The one exception to this was in my science fiction elective course. The teacher was well-known for being flexible and open-minded about what could happen in his classroom, so, when writing a paper that I knew I could churn out in no time flat at that point — a 5-page analysis on the opposite qualities of characters in Frankenstein — I pitched a different concept to the teacher: a comparison of Dr. Frankenstein and the boats in the book to prove that the inanimate objects were more supportive, dedicated, and useful than the worthless scientist. The teacher was skeptical (it was only the first assignment in the class), but gave me the green light.
Writing that paper was the first time I’d laughed (in a non-cynical way) about what I was producing in my entire high school career. I loved that paper: I used it as a writing sample for ages. My teacher loved that paper: he gave me extra credit for surprising him. And, while I hadn’t entirely made the connection at the time, it was the first time I found that writing could still be enjoyable, no matter my subject content, so long as I could write it how I wanted to — and often that entailed making myself laugh somehow.
That narrative continued with my work on the Daily when I was given space every other week to write my own column on whatever I wanted. Nearly every week, “whatever I wanted” turned into, “how can I tell the world about what a disaster I am and make them laugh about it with me?” One of my favorite pieces that I ever wrote was called, “A pocket-sized problem,” in which I just railed against the size of women’s pants pockets. It was the most popular thing I ever wrote for the paper and I still use it for writing samples for jobs. In having the freedom to write exactly what I wanted in the way that I wanted it, including lines like “Here is an alarming statistic that I just made up: Nearly 90 percent of the pockets on pants marketed toward women have suffered from malnourishment to the point of near-extinction. They’re one of the fastest-climbing groups on the endangered list, right after the black rhino and the use of cursive.” I managed to completely untether myself from expectations and enjoy myself in the creation of the article. I created something that I was proud of, something I was willing to put in time and effort into. I don't at all mind having my work looked over by my editor and critiqued so long as, in the end, it's my own words.
Discovering my path
Ultimately, I haven’t returned to writing fanfiction, and I don’t particularly plan to as I have other writing outlets that I enjoy in the same way that I liked that at 13, but I have a different appreciation for that period in my writing career. It gave me unlimited space for practice and experimentation in a medium where I made the rules. In many ways it set me up for greater success in all of the writing that followed — I’d had time to develop my voice, to get some of my worse ideas out of my system, and find what can motivate me.
I started writing in fairly self-focused way, writing purely for my own enjoyment in a format that I was comfortable with, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I’ve evolved in a different direction now. I incorporate new media to tell new stories and pick narratives that are focused on the other rather than the self. I’m excited to see where my evolution brings me next.
Annotated Bibliography
Leeson, Sarah. A House Divided: Meaning Making through Paratexts of House of Cards. Rep. Ann Arbor: Communications 365, 2015. Print.
This was a 12-page textual analysis of the opening of the Netflix series, House of Cards, to show how the elements of the opening prime the viewer for the show. This was one of the largest academic writing undertakings I’d ever attempted, and I wasn’t expecting it to come out well, mostly because it didn’t feel overly impactful to me and I didn’t care too deeply about the topic. I found while writing it though that the prompt was actually extremely open-ended and I could explore it in whatever direction I wanted. Of my more traditional academic papers, this is probably the one that I’m the most proud of since I took the time to decide what aspects of the text I really wanted to delve into. I had quite a bit of freedom to decide what I wanted to talk about and the manner in which I would do it.
Leeson, Sarah. "A Pocket-sized Exercise in Critical Thinking." Michigan Daily [Ann Arbor] 16 Sept. 2015: n. pag. Print.
This was one of the earliest columns I wrote for the Michigan Daily. It was an opinion piece on how women’s pockets on pants are too small and how this defect is actually a ploy by purse manufacturers to sell women more products. While there are places I can point to now that I would change or rephrase if given the chance, the argument I made in it still makes me laugh. Managing to publish a silly conspiracy-style article while still managing to make a point by the end about the Pink Tax was something that I took a great amount of pride in, and it really surprised me that I pulled it off. This was one of the most important steps I took in my writing in finding a balance between comedy and meaning.
Leeson, Sarah. Business Plan and SWOT Analysis for MISSION Ann Arbor. Rep. Ann Arbor: Writing 200, 2016. Print.
This was a 20-page social media plan produced in a group in Writing 200: Writing for New Media on behalf of MISSION Ann Arbor, an organization focused on helping the homeless. By far this piece of writing had the most real and immediate ability of anything I’d produced to make a difference. In explaining clearly what our recommendations were for the organization’s social media outreach, we had the potential to gather more support and awareness to not only the organization but the cause at large. Viewing my writing as a force that could help others in an immediate and life-changing way made me see the potential that I had in my writing to do something much larger than myself, if given the right tools.
Leeson, Sarah. "Fighting Mass Gullibility." Michigan Daily [Ann Arbor] 16 Feb. 2017: n. pag. Print.
This is a more recent column that I wrote for the Michigan Daily. As a contrast to the pocket-focused one, this one became quite serious with very few jokes. I meant for it to be a rather self-deprecating look at how easily I am tricked, but it turned into a much more political look at the spread of fake news and what this could mean for democracy. It was my first real foray into the world of political journalism, and I’m not sure I nailed it, but it was important to me that I start building that ability, too. Making jokes is great, but sometimes there are bigger things that need to be said that a joking tone just can’t accomplish in the same way.
Leeson, Sarah. "Genres Delivered in 30 Minutes or Less (Or Your Writing for Free!)." Blog post. Writing Minor Blog. Sweetland Writing Center, 8 Feb. 2015. Web. 17 Mar. 2017.
This was a short blog post about the genres of everyday items for Writing 220. It was not a particularly memorable or important post out of everything I’ve produced in blogs, but, reading back through it, I can definitely see signs here of me experimenting with multimedia and voice. I made quite a few informal jokes about the trash sitting on my bed which I was using as analysis subjects, and I’d incorporated some gifs to illustrate my points. This was one place that I can point to where I can see my writing changing, throwing off some of the stiffness that academia had tried to tether it with.
Leeson, Sarah. Untouchable: A Personal Narrative. Rep. Ann Arbor: English 325, 2017. Print.
This was.a short personal narrative for English 325 on my dating life. While I was hyper-aware of my grammar in that paper due to the professor’s restrictions, I was still encouraged to make my voice ring through as clearly as I could and, above all, humor and vulnerability were cherished. Humor and vulnerability were what I was ultimately striving to evoke in all of my writing, so that was perfect for me. It was an interesting opportunity to tell a story to others about myself with no call to action or larger point that I was necessarily trying to make about the world like I was accustomed to in my columns. I was back to writing for my own sake in a way like I had with my fanfiction, but it felt different when I was the subject. It felt purposeful to explore myself through writing, and trying to express those findings to others in a coherent way was a unique challenge.
Leeson, Sarah. Video Essay Analysis. Rep. Chicago: DePaul U, 2013. Print.
This was one of the first times that I was able to experiment with multimedia writing in college. This was an analysis I did of a video recording I did of myself telling a personal story for a rhetoric course my freshman year of college. Not only was it strange to be analyzing myself speak, but it forced me to consider how different stories in different media become. I had so many things to focus on in my delivery and how it impacted the rest of the story I was telling that it became overwhelming but thought-provoking. I was certainly used to telling stories aloud, but being forced to take it apart made me rethink how I write stories, too.
Leeson, Sarah. We Did Well: A Twilight Fanfiction. N.p.: FanFiction.net, 2008. N. pag. Print.
This was a 107k word fanfiction that I wrote in 2008. It is not good. I refuse to reread it because I might die of secondhand embarrassment on behalf of my younger self. However, that writing was what made me really start writing with a goal in mind for the first time. I was sharing it with others anonymously rather than letting it live on my hard drive. In sharing it with others, I created expectations for myself about how often and how much I consistently wanted to produce. It’s because of this piece of fiction that I know for sure that i can write that much on one story without giving up on it part way through. The amount of positive reviews I got also served as encouragement for years, even after I’d stopped writing. While I will never share this piece with anyone, I’m not unhappy that it exists.
Leeson, Sarah. "What Do You Know That I Don't?" Audio blog post. Writing 201, 8 Dec. 2016. Web. 17 Mar. 2017.
This was a podcast piece I made for Writing 201: Art of of the Audio Essay. I took a quote from Bill Nye about everyone knowing something that you don’t and ran with it, recording and editing interviews with others about something that they knew that I didn’t. Editing the audio was so much like revising a paper, piecing together the structure of the argument I was making through the sound bytes and clipping the audio to by succinct, but so different at the same time. I had new problems with scripting that I’d never considered, such as how much I was able to trim from my interviewees answers. In prose I would be able to use an ellipse to show that something was missing from the quote, but here there was nothing from stopping me from just cutting away middle parts of speech with no indication that there was anything cut. While I was authentically representing what these people had to say since it was in their words with their own voices, I still had to make sure that what came across was legitimately what they wanted to say. It was a unique challenge in figuring out how to boil down someone else’s words to get what I needed without losing the heart of their own message.
Leeson, Sarah. Why I Write. Rep. Ann Arbor: Writing 220, 2015. Print.
This was a simple, 5-page essay that I wrote for Writing 220 to explore my personal reasons for writing. Much like this essay, it explored who I am as a writer and boiled down my motivation for writing into three main categories of past, present, and future. This paper was actually a great deal of fun since I felt completely at liberty to play with my formatting and work outside of what I was accustomed to from papers with similar prompts and requirements from the past. This was one of the most heavily revised papers I’ve ever produced since I shredded it so many times while exploring what I could make it into. Having that opportunity to figure out exactly how I wanted it to look was a great help in levelling up my writing after that point.