The article “Habituated Practice Can Lead to Enrichment” by Chris M. Anson shares how writers can become entrenched or solidified in their work. When writers focus repeatedly on similar topic, genres, or settings they become “solidified”. Because of this, when writers try to explore topics outside of their norm or attempt to write on topics/genres they are unfamiliar with it becomes challenging. The example in the article compared this challenge to a scientist writing information in a way a broader audience could comprehend what is being said. The way the writers overcome being entrenched in their writing is through practice, time and reflecting. In fact, reflection on writing allows for recognition of mistakes and understanding what is being written about, as well as reflecting on why the writer chose the words they did.
For me, I think the skill that has become entrenched the most was MLA format and how to set up basic 5-paragraph essays in high school. Whenever I write an essay today I always go through the steps that were taught to us in high school. For example, I always come up with the three things I am going to talk about for each paragraph and begin by writing the body paragraphs then the introduction and conclusion. The disadvantage to this entrenched skill is that it doesn’t always allow me to write at a college level and I tend to use a lot of filler words which also causes me to not write at a college level as well. The advantage to this writing format is that it is easy for me to begin an essay and get it set up and from there I can make changes. I think overall habituated practice and automatic skill can be both good and bad for writers depending on the situation. If you become entrenched to writing about one topic, maybe for your career, this could be a good thing because you can perfect that skill and become a proficient writer in your career field. It could be bad if you were to change careers and are writing to a different audience because you then have to learn a new skill and language that makes sense to a different audience.
