Response to WAW #3

GRR
I tend to rely on my teachers, close friends, and family to help me with my writing. Since most of them have their own way of developing ideas and brainstorming, I can experiment with their methods and find what works the best for me. I like to use credible sources to back up my research and then normally have friends read my rough draft and revise it for me. In high school, my teachers were also great at giving me feedback and/or advice.

Summary
In his article Intertextuality and the Discourse Community, James Porter tries to prove to teachers and students that a majority of texts contain "traces" of other texts. Writers build their texts by adding to what others might have already written and further their ideas on the topic. Even in the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson used John Locke's theory to help produce the greatest historical text that our country is based upon. He argues that plagiarism might occur each and everyday.

QD
2) I disagree with Porter because without other sources there will be a limited number of writers who actually produce texts that provide readers with quality information. By using other texts, they can expound their opinions and use previously written texts to help them.
3) He calls the idea of an autonomous writer romantic because they are expressing their own thoughts without using what others have already said. They have a relationship with their writing.
4) Before reading this article, I thought that writing should be evaluated on a basis that is acceptable to the the writer, themselves. This is different than my writing because I have always written to please whoever is grading my paper and I followed their criteria. I still expressed my feelings, but it was constricted to what was expected in my writing.
5) His work fails to reflect on the principles of being "original" because he uses a quote from Vincent Leitch to help convince to readers that texts are all related to previous ones.
6) Porter says that by imagining writing "as individual, isolated. as heroic," it puts writers on a pedestal when they really aren't worthy because it is all borrowed from others.

MM
His study has changed the way I imagined writers and writing. I don't think of writers as being nearly as original as I did before reading this since they all base their material off of others. Adopting this notion of writing, would change the way I write because I wouldn't write as an individual, expressing my own thoughts on paper.

I think this article was interesting and it definitely changed my view on writers and their work. This was helpful because it taught me something new, but I still plan on writing with a sense of originality. However, I think it will be useful to help me with researching and using other people's ideas to strengthen my paper. I agree with Porter that most texts have used other sources.