Blog Post 18

The blog posts that I found the most useful for helping me develop as a writer were the brain storming posts. Those really allowed me to express what I'm trying to say without having to worry about writing in a certain format or in a grammatically correct manner. For example, this blog post I wrote, "I think I'm going to focus this paper on what resources are renewable/nonrenewable and/or how we treat our land by growing certain products. So many different things are wasted when it comes to farming, especially water and energy. What really comes to mind is something Wendell Berry says, "The way Americans proclaim and pride ourselves on about how much we love our land does not match with the way we actually use our land and our farming resources". This quote is so unbelievably true. Americans as a whole pride ourselves on our love for our land yet we treat it like it means nothing. We throw away resources like there's no tomorrow when in reality there could someday be a "no tomorrow" with the way we're going about farming now. Another thing that is ruining our land from farming is the run-off of fertilizers and is destroying water and creating "dead-zones". In general, the way we are farming is not very sustainable and is destroying the world faster and faster each day. But is there really any way we can go back to the source and start all over? How would we be able to provide for everyone if we tried to do this? How can we get our land to actually be something we are proud of?" (Brainstroming Paper 3). That post really allowed me to sort out exactly what I want to talk about in my paper and really abled me to sort out how I want to outline my paper and how to go about writing. Other posts that really helped me develop as a writer were the reading responses such as, "Where Did Our Clothes Come From?" by Emily Fontaine is a blog post from Emily's fashion blog called Le Quaintrelle which is on BlogSpot.com. Emily talks about how as consumers we need to know where our clothes are coming from and who is making it. She pulled out all of her clothes from her closet and made a pile of clothes that were made in the USA which was only 1/4th of her closest. She then divided that into multiple piles based on being designer clothes, "retail" clothes, "thrifted" clothes, and things bought off Ebay. Doing this really showed Emily that she doesn't always know where your money is going and who it is supporting. A lot of clothes we buy are actually from developing countries who don't have laws against child labor or fair wages. If we continue to buy clothes from them then we're only going to keep supporting how they out-source their jobs for a cheaper price. But if we buy domestically, then we'll support our own country and our own economy" (Blog Post 15). Doing these responses helped me in the same way as the brainstorming. I got to flesh out how I feel about the readings without having to figure out how to say it just yet. By getting out my emotions about the reading after I first read it helped me later on in my writing process when I am trying to figure out what I'm trying to say, because it makes it easier to word it if I know what I'm trying to say.