Author: Marvin Lezama

Writing Assignment 3 Process Essay

Marvin Lezama, Mental Health and Culture Coexstitng

 

Marvin Lezama
ENG 1121 D474
Professor Penner
February 25, 2020
Word Count: 1009

YCteen Discourse Community

During my years in high school, I have realized that I’m stronger in literature than any of my other classes. For example, my general courses. Some were, Public Speaking, Black Theater and English 1120 which consisted of us students researching and writing under a given topic, which I deeply found a passion for, leading me to writing for YCteen’s. YCteen’s is a magazine company that I discovered through my high school. This company was looking for writers, willing to write personal stories about the struggles of teens. I was very intrigued and decided to apply and well long story short, I got the opportunity to be a writer for this magazine. This discourse community is teen magazine writers. My initial assumptions of the group was that they were all intellectual young writers and that they were going to have more impressive stories that would overtake mine. My intentional interaction of their content, I was impressed by their stories and for most of them their ways of telling or portraying their stories.
To begin, our whole goal and premise is to write stories based on teens experience. Their goal is to let teens voice their problems that matter or are relevant to them. They want to project their voice to show the indifference there is and how deep teen issues are. They want to change the media’s perception and let teen voices be normalized in the media. It’s a way where similar ground can be reached and where many similarities in personal experience can be shared and be beneficial/helpful to many teens, who may have gone through in their life. The struggles they face as being young individuals. They want to share and publish young writers so they can be experienced and be involucrated to the writing world. Since I’m very new to this group, I am yet to become close to other writers but I’ve communicated with a few people around the office (editors and the different people from the other departments of the magazine) and they all have the same perspective, similar ideas. Holly, a Senior Editorial Director for teens and as well as my current editor said, “they want to give young writers the opportunity to publish their stories”. The ways they communicate or share ideas is by meetings or reunions with editors/staff members. If an editor wants to meet and discuss the writing or content of a writer then those are other meetings or a get along with the editor, to discuss their project. There can also be lessons that are given so that coversatation can be sparked about a student writing with other writers present. For example, if I wanted to converse with my editor on introducing a new idea, we would sit together either by their computer or mine and I would share my ideas going back and forth with them and corroborate or discuss an idea or a topic for a new story to work on.

Since, they publish stories and let teens voice their opinions and stories, that’s how they communicate to the outside world. They share their opinions and create content to different audiences to inform them and shed light on different experiences. The “language” differs in certain situations, we communicate using more slang or easier vernacular, but as we write things for the magazine we tend to use better vocabulary and use sensory writing. Proceeding, I’m a very new writer and when it comes to writing it’s something I love to do but I want to learn how to improve. Being in this discourse community is a learning experience where we learn from our mistakes, which is one of the things one would learn or should know before joining. From partaking in this magazine, I’ve learned that it is most personal, memoir writing. One would have to know or experience something and be open and willing to talk about it because if not then your content would not be interesting or even useful. Something I also learned while being in this discourse community is that not everyone is professional and sophisticated. After being in this discourse group, I learned that some of the writers are not up to pair with their writing skills. Most of the writers that come in for the magazine are not experienced writers and are most times not really good at it. Something that is vital before joining is that the writing tends to be personal experience and they don’t use creative or informative writing, more memoir writing. So, if one is poetic and is more driven to figurative writing, joining this teen magazine writing group will not suit you.

A full member of the group is considered one who is constantly writing and a quick worker when it comes to responding to your editor’s notes and questions. Since we all come together to one place we discuss and try to form our stories from there. A full member to me is one who is constantly thinking about their writing and new additions to their story. Conflicts may arise when there can be a disagreement in what the editors may want to add to the story, the writer who has the story or content most times will have to go along with the editor and trust them with their writing. Since the editor is the one who knows best for the writer and creates a good way of informing the reader or audience.

To conclude, after being in this group and writing about this discourse community I have realized and understand the concept the and can discuss more about this discourse community. Something that I learned or was shocked about learning was how good the system is for setting up the writers. I am also glad to know that there is a magazine which gives this opportunity for interested writers to improve their writing skills. This discourse community has been very eye opening and beneficial to me.

Words cited

St. Lifer, Holly. Personal interview. February 13, 2020.