Category: Intro

When Mike Bunn writes “You are already an author”, I think he means exactly that; you are already an author. We have years of experience in writing, from school assignments, writing in our free time, emails, texts, writing when helping others, taking notes at work meetings, etc.

I enjoy writing poetry and journaling important events in my life. I became passionate in writing poetry when I read one of Emily Dickenson poetry books which contained a variety of her poems. I started journaling in junior high school because I wanted to one day write an autobiography. I still journal today and have books and books of important events in my life.

This existing expertise will help me in my college reading and writing career because I already enjoy reading and writing during my free time. Plus, the career path I am heading towards, is already what I do as far as work; construction project management with minor engineering work.

Some of the techniques I noticed in Bunn’s article that I would like to implement in my own writing is to first know what my writing assignment is ahead of time as well as writing in the margins. As mentioned in page 78 “Is this the kind of writing you will be assigned to write yourself?”, I agree with Bunn technique; knowing what kind of writing I have been assigned will help me prioritize what I am reading. Nevertheless, I will be able to mark up the text in correlation to the assignment. I am already a note taker and I highlight important text in the reading material, but knowing the writing assignment prior to reading the text, will help me highlight the important text for the assignment rather than what I think is important. I don’t typically write in the margin I always use my notebook to take notes. Moving forward I will be using this technique instead. It will be easier for me to look at the margin notes and connect it to the highlight since I will continue to highlight the text.

The essay by Mike Bunn “How to Read Like a Writer” points out how you should read articles, poems, essays, and books to identify the written decision the author has made.  For example, did the author use the right quote, was the structure of the words formal or informal?  Do you have a good understanding of the author’s purpose of the writing, who is the target audience?  These are some of the techniques you can use to read like a writer.    On page 75 the last paragraph Mike Bunn stated, “You are already an author, and that means you have a built-in advantage when reading like a writer.”  Bunn is pointing out in our past tense writing inside a classroom, on the job correspondence, written reposts, or general e-mails has prepared us to read like a writer.  Due to the fact we have written things in the past, we have developed a skill set on identifying what an author is trying to establish in their text.  This will influence our decision to follow the author’s written pattern or use a different approach to reach the reader.  Each time we write we are trying to find the best method to captivate the target audience.

Generally, with my written assignments, I do a quick scan read, I will read the first and last sentence of each paragraph to get the concept of the main idea.  This practice helps me with my note taken and annotating.   After reading Bunn’s “How Read Like a Writer” from page 77 the second paragraph the title “In What Genre Is This Written?”  I will add this method to help me read like a writer.   The Genre will help me identify the type of writing.   Once the type of written is discovered I will look for keywords.  Bunn’s former student Mike made a convincing point when reading philosophy on how to identify signaling words.   Mike points out how certain words will develop the direction of the argument. For example, words like therefore furthermore will support the argument, and words like however, despite would be clue words against the argument.  I think this is something that will benefit me when I annotate the text.  I also think it will help me formulate my thesis.

In the article, Mike Bunn writes “you are already an author”; I believe he means that we ourselves are already writers. We have our own way of writing on certain topics. For example, certain things I write already are assignments, messages, emails, reading, and journaling. There are different ways of analyzing certain texts. There are different expertise that will help in college reading and writing but it will all have to depend on the student. As mentioned in the article you as a person have to decide what you wish to keep and discard/ what will be useful for themselves that they know they can use properly. 

There were certain things that I decided to keep in mind that I had noticed in Bunn’s article in which I will like to try in my own writing. One will be asking questions to take more out of the certain thing I might be reading. Usually, for assignments, I go into the reading for specific answers and don’t really keep in mind what I wish to have in my own writing. That is something that I will take action in. Something else I will work on is to write ideas on things I would have change/ add if I were the one writing it.