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Erin Workman

Dr. Yancey

Everyday Writing

24 November

Traces of Everyday Writing Ecologies

The process of composing my ePortfolio has reminded me of all the writing that I do and

have done everyday since the time that I learned to write. As I assembled course texts

around and over the zine I recently made, I saw new connections between the concepts

weve discussed in everyday writing and actual practices in which Ive engaged long before

this course. In this reflection on everyday writing Ill discuss the five key terms introduced

in my key terms glossary mundane, ecologies, circulation, genre, and network in

relation to our course texts, and Ill conclude by considering future directions for studying

everyday writing as raised by the process of composing my ePortfolio.

As I state in the introduction to my ePortfolio, everyday writing is defined differently

depending on the framework within which it is viewed. However, most everyday writing

scholars seem to agree on two key points: 1) that everyday writing is mundane , often to

the point of invisibility (Lillis 76; Bart on and Papen), and 2) everyday writing is central tohow societies operate and to the ways individuals relate to each other and to institut ions

(Barton and Papen 7). As an FYC teacher, I see this every semester when I ask my students

about the writing that they do, and they list only school-based writing; in other words, they

fail to see that the writing they do everyday is writing. As a new Masters student, I had a

similar experience with my pedagogy professor. During our first meeting, Pat said, Your

writing is very strong. How did you become such a good writer?, and I replied (as someone

not at all familiar with composition studies might), Wellmy 10 th grade teacher focused a

lot on grammar. No, no! Thats not it at all, Pat exclaimed. Did you r ead a lot growing

up? I replied that I did that I read all the time, and we stopped there, satisfied that it was

the reading that had done the important work of developing my writing

skills. While I wouldnt contest that claim, I would add to it: I wrote all

the time . I wrote songs, poems, short stories, lists, letters, notes, and I

Magna Doodle PhoneCover

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wrote on whatever material was available, including my magna doodle phone, books, and

walls. Like my FYC students, I did not think of this writing as writing because it was

mundane. Because it had become routine. And because routinization renders actions

invisible (and unavailable for reflection and critique).

For me, this routinization is key to understanding everyday writing: I contend that the

familiar becomes routinized through both repetition and circulation of texts, a process

which enables genres to emerge and networks to (re)form. I began this line of thought in

my All the Frameworks SRR when I state, Publics are formed and maintained through

the circulation of texts (R&W, H&M), as are institutions (R&W), social movements (H&M),

and social spaces (Ackerman). Likewise, individuals (re)compose identities through

literacy practices as they move between social spaces, navigate institutions, participate in

counter/publics, and effect change. We see this most explicitly in Yanceys discussion of

Mary and the Crusaders. Mary utilizes writing becaus e writing enacts her network of

rel ationships and keeps her connected to her past (3). Working first with penny postcards

(4), Mary and the Crusaders soon transition to letters (4-5), and letters become

newsletters mixed -up letters (5) as the network continues to grow. We can see this as

well in the zine community as the circulation of zines enabled new genres to emerge grrrl

zines, perzines, scene zines and geographically-dispersed individuals to becomenetworked through the cultivation of shared identities, values, and practices. Most

importantly, these genres and networks exist both within and across ecologies of everyday

writing.

Everyday writing, from my perspective, can be defined as mundane texts that circulate to

(re)from genres and networks w ithin and across ecologies. Ive arrived at this

understanding through the work of my case studies, both of which have revealed to me theimportance of ecologies for everyday writing. For instance, as I noted in my case study on

my great- grandmothers (Bes sie) composition book, much of her writing was used to

organize her life as in her address book, shopping lists, and financial logs or to

document her life as in her diary entries and log of correspondence. Reading the

composition book, one gets the impression that Bessie did not intend to circulate this

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writing to others; rather, she used these writing practices as a kind of memory-work to

help her keep track of personal details of friends and family that she might forget as her

Alzheimers progressed. Alternatively, Truckface #16 transcends the personal/social divide

in that LB (the author) composes short narratives based on her personal experiences as a

way of making sense of these experiences both for herself and for others. Whereas my

great-grandmother wrote for herself , LB is clearly writing for both herself and others , a

point which becomes clearer when we view these texts as part of an ecology.

Whats interesting about the composition book is that it provides evidence of its operating

within an ecology: the correspondence log points to the existence of letters, the shopping

list points to the existence of recipes, and the arithmetic points to financial transactions.

However, we cannot see this ecology; we can only see its traces . LBs zine, on the other hand,

points to its existence within different kinds of ecologies, many of them school-based.

Reading the zine, we can see that LB writes lesson plans, assignment sheets, comments on

student work, and emails to students and colleagues. She also describes her participation in

the Chicago Teachers Strike, which points to her participation in resistant vernacular

rhetorics. Likewise, the zine itself operates within an ecology of resistant vernacular

rhetorics by providing a view from below on an event wi dely covered by dominant media

sources. The zine is self-published, advertised on popular zine distros and LBs (bands )tumblr, and offered as incentive to people who might donate money via a fundraising

website. Thus, LBs zine moves outside of her individual ecology of writing, working to

form a network of readers similarly invested in resisting state and federally mandated

curricula.

Though I cannot generalize based on these two case studies, I would like to further explore

ecologies of everyday writing, particularly as they intersect with transfer studies. Thesecase studies have helped me to see that writing always operates within an ecology if not

multiple ecologies even if we can only see traces of those ecologies, and that creating a

binary between in-school and out-of-school writing is not only impossible (as Prior and

Shipka and Roozen have already demonstrated), it is counterintuitive to the Teaching for

Transfer (TFT) model. Ill use my ePortfolio composing process and product as an example.

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I knew that I wanted to create an ePortfolio that remediates a zine because my personal

interests have recently turned toward this direction. Ive spent the past year learning more

about zines and zine culture through building my own zine library and reading scholarship

on zines (particularly grrrl zines). My ePortfolio a school-based genre reflects these

interests and draws explicitly on extant zines, both my own and others. For instance, the

cover design and key terms glossary are appropriated from Everyday Magic (featured on

my ePortfolio materials page), the introduction page design is copied from my own zine

Write Now! and the remaining pages assemble course texts alongside and on top of pages

from Write Now! , with the exception of the reflection page, which is appropriated from my

personal journal. Through assemblage, I have put course texts into conversation with texts

about writing featured in Write Now! . For instance, Everyday Writing as Identity

Construction my collaboratively authored blog post is assembled atop my contribution

to Write Now! , which focuses on how writing connects me to others and helps me to hold

onto certain identities. The title for this page is placed in conversation with another

zinesters contribution, which states that Language never leaves and is always there and

its what we share (even if we dont) collectively. This excerpt speaks to the relationship/s

between language, collectivity, and identity construction. Similarly, my first case study is

assembled with a text on the power of literacy (A Dangerous Thing), primarilydemonstrated through a discussion of Frankie Silver. Though the surface content of this

zine text might not seem applicable to my case study, I believe that the message of the zine

text is what counts: as the reader can see at the bottom of the page featuring the case study,

if you are not the author of your own narrative, you can expect that someone else will be.

Just as my case study focuses on the importance of everyday writing for memory-work and

reveals traces of Bessies everyday writing literacy practices, the zine text speaks to the

power of working within ecologies of writing.

Though I believe my ePortfolio is strengthened by my assemblage of everyday writing and

school-based texts, I also see a tension between the two. As a medium, zines draw on

multiple modes to create meaning/s. Though some zines are more alphabetic-text heavy

than others, most zines rely on relationships between layout, color, font type (be this typed

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or handwritten), material, images, and so on. School-based writing, on the other hand,

remains largely alphabetic. This tension is evident in the zine, particularly on pages like

SRR 1: Jenny Rice, which attempts to replicate the zine format by using a background of

crumpled paper and a font reminiscent of the typewriter, and All the Frameworks, which

does include images but is primarily alphabetic in nature. As I composed these and the case

study pages, I found myself frustrated with the amount of alphabetic text I was including.

No zine would ever feature this much text, or at least not at this density. Likewise, zines

typically do not include MLA or APA style citations: ideas are attributed to others, but

casually and without quotation. Thus, even though this ePortfolio has enabled me to work

across texts and genres within and across ecologies of writing, it has also limited the texts

networking potentials (in that this remediated zine would not resonate with the grrrl/zine

community).

Going forward, then, I would like to investigate what ecological models of writing can teach

us about transfer between sites, networks, and ecologies. Though I believe that we often

see traces of everyday writing ecologies in students school -based texts, I would like to see

what students can learn by focusing on these traces and making them explicit at least for

themselves. How might assignments that encourage students to assemble or remix texts

from multiple sites, across multiple ecologies, help facilitate the reflective awareness ofwriting that is crucial to transfer? How might encouraging students to draw on their

everyday writing as they compose in the TFT classroom help them to develop more robust

theories of writing?