Day 5

Writing... it is something I enjoy and dread all in one. I love to write when I am feeling emotional, angry, sad, upset, happy, excited... but when I need to explore or learn something, I research it, I look it up on line, I ask friends and family, and fellow classmates their opinion, or their knowledge on the subject. So I was thinking could writing be a way to research? I think yes, but it would depend also on the type of research or subject you want to explore. I think in self searching you can write to discover things about yourself, you can write to explore your thoughts on a subject. If you are felling conflicted about different choices, or options, don't friends or counselors tell us to write out the pros and cons? So can you research that way? can you write pros and cons to discover information on something. Let's try it out... one of my topic ideas was grief, which would be more a nonfiction type idea, so is there enough to to it to make it an academic writing project? I can use my blog/journal I have kept since losing my husband. I can compare it to the stages of death I have heard in school and from many grief counselors, I can compare it with others grief, C.S. Lewis wrote about losing his wife in a grief observed, it can act as research. I have received letters in dealing and coping with grief from the cemetery, I can use. I can talk to the carious grief counselors we have met. I can talk to other widows.

SO what about another subject I have considered... building on a current paper, The Sex Of the Writer (see one of the earlier posts on this blog for original paper). Is this a topic I could expand on? I could do more research, I could quiz fellow students, and more outside of school. I could look into more authors, popular and less known. I could talk to others for their opinion. Perhaps someone has looked into this before. In the original paper I asked if the sex of the writer had an influence on the sex of the reader, or do female readers mostly read female writers, and male readers read male writers...

I guess writing truly helps draw out the ideas... but not so much the research... you have to look outside your self for that a bit more... but I think it is definitely a research tool.