Writing outside the classroom or library is a portal for writers to connect more deeply with their subject
From the scary moment in elementary school when we learn what an essay is to the late nights in college when we are finishing up our research papers, most students have been bombarded with different lessons and rules about the structure of an essay. From the outline to the rough draft to the final paper, there is a specific process that we have habitually followed through years of schooling. While we may venture outside the classroom to perform research or gain inspiration, eventually, most writers will retreat back inside their rooms or the library for the actual writing. While this is the norm for most student writers, there may be a way for writers to write with a more authority and authenticity than they could if they wrote solely in the classroom or the dorm.
Olin Bjork and John Pedro-Schwartz’s article, “Writing in the Wild: A Paradigm for Mobile Composition” calls for a new writing process that allows the writer to be more connected to their writing material. This process requires the writers to write and publish in spaces that contain the object of their writing. They argue “that students can better perceive-and learn to challenge-their social, cultural, and historical locations when they research, write, and even publish on location”(225). Through a deeper connection to the the material, these writers will be utilize and respond to the different “rhetorical opportunities”(234) that these spaces contain.
I found this article interesting, not only because it offers a new standard for writing, but because I feel that the younger generations are well on their way to learning to “write in the wild.” Forms of social media, namely Twitter and Facebook, are, at their core, reactions to the outside world. While this is not the same as Bjork’s and Pedro-Schwartz’s proposal, I believe that this generation’s obsession with social media provides a platform where students will adapt more easily to this new writing process.