Journal 8

To be collaborative one must first be willing to work with others and share their ideas.  They also must be able to take another’s ideas or beliefs and in using those, create new assumptions or draw new conclusions from the other person’s opinions.  Basically it is working together on some intellectual scale in order to achieve a common goal.  Collaboration plays a very significant role in everyday writing.  Everyday writing must be in response to some kind of situation and have a specific audience.  In order for one to truly understand either of these, there must be some kind of collaborative effort.  Jerkins points out in “Why Heather Can Write: Media Literacy and the Harry Potter Wars” that there is a website created by Heather Lawver, in which children and fans all over the world can submit their ideas about future Harry Potter adventures.  Heather then corrects the submitted pieces for grammar, spelling, and style.  After this is complete Heather then pieces a story together and sends it out so that everyone can enjoy them.  This is collaboration at its finest.

            In everyday writing, I would agree with Emily that collaboration is very beneficial.  It would be very hard for someone to be able to identify a particular audience or inform people of a particular situation if he or she did not collaborate with other people who also have information on a certain topic.  With this being said, collaboration is not necessary for everyday writing.  For example a heart filled letter from one lover to another is extremely personal and would not require collaboration.  It would be almost inappropriate to collaborate on something of that nature.