Journal #2: What does it mean to be a writer?

In Powell’s “1937 – Defending Honor,” the people of the Shenandoah National Park are portrayed as writers, and rightfully so. While the families who lived on the land that was to be used for the Shenandoah National Park waited for their compensation from the government in the form of a new residence, confusion and miscommunication between government officials and the families mounted. In response, the people who lived on the land wrote letters to the government officials to address any questions they had about the rules or regulations that they had to follow, or to request any services from the government officials.

A writer can be anyone who expresses their thoughts and ideas onto a lasting or permanent form. The people of the Shenandoah National Park did exactly this; they used the materials available to them at the time to express their experiences and issues. Ultimately, the goal of a writer is to convey the intended message of your work to an audience. While the people of the Shenandoah National Park utilized different language and rather informal spelling compared to what we use today, they were still able to transfer whatever they wished to express to the government officials onto paper and also made their intended message clear to the officials. Claire pointed out in her journal that there can be different fields of writing. I would like to argue that writing can be all-encompassing, and that the fundamentals of writing remain true for anyone who wishes to organize their thoughts and ideas onto a lasting form. All writers set out to achieve the same goal of conveying their beliefs and ideas to an audience, but each writer has their own reason for writing. This is what can set an individual writer apart from other writers.