Blog 1

I believe that writing as a hobby can be a way of expressing oneself. But among other things, writing is a way to archive data, and is even the building blocks for speech itself. So without writing we wouldn't have speech or any way of "copying" as we learned is the first step in the remix video. However, in this case I think the question was addressing writing as hobby. And writing is great as a hobby because there is no limits to what someone can and can't talk about. Writing is great for this because people can make up their own worlds as in "Lord of The Rings," and just run with it. J.R.R Tolkien even took it a step farther than that! Making his own language for his own fantasy world. So that is why i think writing is so powerful in allowing someone to express them self. The next question is, what is a remix? And from what I can tell through the video we watched during class on monday, a remix is taking a simple idea from someone before you and changing it to a small extent. But that isn't where a remix stops. Something truly becomes a remix when you combine the small transformations of those before you and make something new. A quote I wrote down from mondays lecture was "everything relies on what came before it, to an extent." Which is my exact view on a remix. This can even be applied to the idea of writing. No one becomes a great writer out of thin air. At some point in any good writers life they must read the good writing of another author and get the feel for what great writing is. After that comes the transformation period where an upcoming writer will add their own independent style to their work. And soon that will even progress to the remix: where style and setting and transition and word flow and syntax and diction all have small independent transformations that are combined to make something new, a remix. I expect this class to be insightful on the lives of authors through our time and apply the three step remix we watched during our first class. In this class I hope to take a grasp of maybe one or two authors and make my own transformations from their writing style so that I might be a better writer.