Writing means a lot to me. It's a huge part of my life.
As a journalist, I find myself writing in one way or another every single day. I love this profession. Being a writer, I get a better understanding of myself and my own style of writing and communicating with the world around me.
So often, if I write something and I'm not crunched for deadline and have time to play with the piece, I'll re-work it over and over until its exactly how I want it. This practice has made me a better writing and a more self-aware person overall. I take what I learn with writing into consideration with everything I do in life. If you can do it once, you can do it again and be even better at it.
The coolest thing about writing is the way it's shaped me into who I am today. By taking my thoughts on a topic and putting them to my keyboard, I immerse myself in a single thought for a prolonged period of time and the outcome of the piece inspires and motivates both myself and my readers.
Of the writing I do to communicate with my audiences, 99.9 percent of it comes electronically. Even working for the Olean Times Herald, one may hold a physical copy of the paper that I wrote in, but the text took a long journey from my head, through my hands to a keyboard, and then through a series of digital platforms like Google Docs and Adobe InDesign before making it to the newspaper.
While physically writing with my hands and a pen is definitely more intimate, my handwriting is not very good and I've found ways to communicate style over the computer to convey feelings to my audience.
As a journalist, people take in my content in a few different ways, and I believe the mediums I use are what expands on the culture of digital writing the most. I use things like Instagram and Twitter to send out real-time tweets or posts to let my viewers know where I am and what I'm doing, and my work is also published regularly on the Olean Times Herald's website, which has seen in a rise in viewership while the physical paper has seen a decline. That's just the culture we're living in these days, one where people would rather find their news and entertainment on the web rather than purchase a physical copy of the latest issue.
As a producer of digital content, in order to be good I have to also be a consumer of it as well. All too often I find myself reading Tweets or scrolling though Instagram to found out what the rest of the world is doing around me. Seeing what's going on around me helps shape my own style and what/how I write. This ultimately makes me a better writer and benefits my readers. For inspiration, I take in a lot of pop culture, memes, news, sports and music content.
As an aspiring journalist and journalism major and English minor, so much of my academic journey and life goals revolve around writing. I look forward to being in this class to learn new practices of writing in digital spaces while also expanding on what I know to improve my skills. I hope to find this class as less of the stylistic class thatI've found within my major and more of a course that will help me better understand my own writing and how it's perceived by those around me. Also, I look forward to working here on Wix to expand my knowledge of this platform.
Christian Gravius
