First of all, I should apologize for not having completed all the Writing 101 assignments. I am sure that, had I done so, I would have gleaned much more from the course. Nevertheless, as someone who is relatively new to blogging, I learnt an enormous amount and am very grateful to the organizers for this.
Perhaps the most important lesson came from the pressure to post regularly—something I have hitherto been reluctant to do. This was helped greatly by being encouraged not to be too self-critical. After all, there is no feedback but paranoia, unless you put stuff out there! And I was pleasantly surprised by the warmly positive comments I received on posts that, had it not been for this course, I would certainly have self-censored, endlessly edited, or not produced at all.
Having to produce texts relatively regularly also helped me to strive to be more succinct and I found myself becoming more aware that I am writing for a much wider audience than I am accustomed to and adapting my style and extending my repertoire accordingly.
Although I baulked at some tasks—short-stories and dialogue aren’t really my thing—I found the course helped me out of a rut I had fallen into of thinking that a blog should be a kind of journalistic extension of essentially academic discourse… I took the opportunity to try out posts with a different kind of style and content and found this both liberating and rewarding in equal measure.
I was especially impressed by the global reach of this project and the diversity of the potential audience. I have certainly changed my approach to blogging in the light of this experience and would like, once again, to thank the organizers and all those around the world who visited, liked or commented on my posts.
Congratulations to everyone involved!