I'm learning how to blog :)

So, I don't know about anybody else in this class, but I've never really blogged before.  I mean, I had a myspace once upon a time (do people even know what myspace is anymore?  Did I just date myself?  I bet I'm living in a world where people legitimately have never had nor ever heard of a myspace....oh god....*brain explodes from the thought of how quickly Jamie came to see herself as old*), and I used to write fanfiction on quizilla.com before Nickelodeon bought it (no, it wasn't good.), but blogging is a totally new thing.

It seems like this is going to be pretty cool; I can say anything I want :)

With great power, though, comes great responsibility; I promise not to post pictures of my lunch ;)

So writing, to me, means a lot of things.  I think the format of my posting (the means of "publishing" the pieces I've "authored") largely determines a lot about my process.  I figure I should tell everybody, just so you know it's not a thing that only happens to newbies in the writing community, that big projects still seriously intimidate me.  The less formal I make things, like journal assignments for a class or posts on social media or random rantings to myself that I know nobody else is going to read, the easier it is for me to get started and to write a whole bunch.  I converted that into my academic writing by using a lot of freewriting; I tend to freak out and have a hard time starting if I don't start with a good hook, so instead I'll open a separate word document and just start word-vomiting everything I know I want to say about the topic.  I then (eventually) start drafting whatever it is I'm working on.  I type notes to myself a lot :[MAKE SURE YOU COME BACK AND FIX THIS], INSERT SOURCE HERE, Look up the name of that one guy!  etc.  It takes the pressure off, knowing that I'm not typing the finished product yet but shaping the paper instead, like a very rough sketch where you just get the basic shapes in.  If I don't leave myself enough time to do this (grad students aren't perfect; we procrastinate too.  Anyone who tells you he or she never procrastinated on anything ever is a liar.), then I stress out a lot and my papers get done in between episodes of netflix and fits of hyperventilating (sometimes literally....don't write like me, guys.  Haha.)

So now that I've babbled a bit, it's time to do some of the things I've been procrastinating on while blogging (I'm reading Frankenstein and Lord of the Rings for one of my classes.  Yeah, grad classes are awesome.).  Have a nice day, everybody :)