After reading Bolter’s “Writing the Mind” and Chang’s “Culture: A Web of Self and Others,” I feel as though writers speak for not only themselves but also for the people that relate to them. My personal identity has shaped my writing in a unique way because I find that I’m normally an odd, awkward, funny, “whatever you want to call it” type of guy and it translates into the style of my writing and the topics I write about. As most writers do, I like to write about the topics that interest me. This basically concludes that my writing will mention lots of food, animals, travel and personal experiences. Those things are what formulate my own personal writing culture. Writing is an “extension and a reflection” of the mind which effects people personally because when a reader is reading, they are in their mind, not thinking about others opinions, just focusing on the text. My writing has a balance of self and culture in the sense that I love to express my feelings but I am also aware of who I am directing my messages to and as to who I may be impacting. I try to make my writing relatable to culture because I want what I say to have an impact on people and for them to have a reaction to it.
An example of how my writing is both reflective of the cultural influences, but also extends my individual self of those cultures is when I wrote my story about how I spilt my Jamba Juice. This is an example of me reflecting on my past experiences and how they made me feel. This piece also relates heavily on the culture of students and people in general who can relate to the story. It shows how I was culturally impacted by this event because when speaking to my peers, they all related in some way to the story which made me feel as though there was a large enough group of people that could relate to my experience. I also felt as though people could relate to my anger throughout the story because anger is something that everyone has to go through in their everyday lives.
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