“Individuals participating in multiple contexts account for social aspects of writing, and at the same time writing is located in an individual who is necessarily distinct,” says Kathleen Blake Yancey. Writing is made up of thoughts, and thoughts come from people. Every person is different, so therefore, every work of writing is different. A piece of writing is produced from its author’s thoughts and experiences. Every author has a unique history and a unique way of thinking, so, therefore, every writer writes differently.
Yancey brings to attention that “neither writers nor their contexts are static,” (Writers’ Histories, Processes, and Identities Vary). Each author views things in a different way. The lens through which an individual sees the world is shaped by their past experiences and the things they experience in the present which are actively building what will be, in the future, that individual’s history. Writer’s are just as varied as their works, and they are the current that drives the ever changing flow of composition; a stream in which the works of every author drift together.
Writers connect to past and present authors by reading their works and then connect to current and future writers by producing a work that will be read. In this way, writing is a social activity as well as individual. Authors are undeniably linked to one another through writing while at the same time being incredibly unique. As Andrea Lunsford points out, “If no one is an island, as poet John Doone famously argued, then no writing is isolated and alone either.” Every single author accounts for a piece in the complex web of rhetoric. Each piece is unique, yet each piece has limitless potential to connect to others.
A person’s history is made up of many parts. Author’s draw on their past when writing, so naturally, a written work is influenced by other written works that the author has read in addition to the author’s lived experiences. As Lunsford says, “In addition to drawing on memories of writing, writers also draw on personal knowledge and lived experience in creating new texts,” (Writing is Informed by Prior Experience). People are not one dimensional so neither is their writing. Any given work of writing is the thoughts of an individual which have been influenced by the thoughts of other individuals and will themselves go on to influence yet more individual authors. The society of writing is a complex and ever connected web of thought, experience, and expression. The world of rhetoric is home to countless people with vastly different histories and personalities, and all of these separate people together create written works with endless connectivity.
