Meta Post

Blogs have always been fascinating to me, and there have been times where I have wanted to start one, but I never had anything to write about.  Although we are given guidelines on what to write about, like issues pertaining to America and storytelling, the rules are so broad that there aren't many things we can't write about. Since we have so much leeway with our posts, I tried to make my topics vary, instead of only focusing on one or two main points.  This got difficult sometimes, because sometimes I wasn't as interested in a blog idea, but I wrote about it anyway.  This is something I really want to work on next semester.  There were some blogs, like my first blog post--http://hungerford1016.blogspot.com/2011/09/first-blog-post.html--that I had a lot of fun writing.  This post is nowhere near my best writing, but I had a lot to say on the topic, so I think it was one of my more successful blog posts.

One other thing I tried to work on over the course of this semester was my blog length.  I started out trying to shove as much information into the posts as I could.  I did this because I didn't know which point would be the best, so I wanted to have everything.  I have learned that this is not the best way to write because no one wants to read a blog post that is 5 paragraphs long.  I really knew I had to be more concise when I read Mr. O'Connor's blog about Troy Davis.  He only had a couple paragraphs, and they were short, but I was one of the most compelling and informative blog post I have ever read.  I have tried to work on being more concise since then, but it is something that still needs a lot of working on in the coming semester.

I believe that something I improved a lot on is linking my blogs to articles.  I never did that in the beginning, and I can see how it weakened my arguments.  They seemed more like rants and scattered opinions than actual information.  I think the best blog that I have written--http://hungerford1016.blogspot.com/2011/11/learning-how-to-play.html--was so strong because I used an article and then pulled quotes out and analyzed them.  I could really back up my claims, which made the blog more appealing.

I liked reading how my writing has evolved over this semester, and hope to see much more during the rest of this year, and beyond.