I’ve often used writing as a way of establishing my “individual identity.” Kaestle argues that writing has “allowed authorship to be recorded and recognized, therefore contributing to the development of individualism in the world of ideas” (16). The importance of authorship is very predominant in our society. When I discuss books with people, one of the first things that I include with a description of the text is the author’s name. As a society, we place a high value on the ethos of an author. We’re prone to determine whether or not a work is worth our time based upon whether or not the author’s name is recognizable. This happened to me recently when I was selecting new books to read. I chose two books, one by Albert Camus and Amy Tan. I chose both of these as a result of the authors being recognizable and not because of the contents or story details. We value the idea of authorship.
In addition, I have used writing prolifically as a way of establishing my identity. In journaled during high school as a way of documenting and organizing my thoughts. I write fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction as a way of expressing identity and self through abstract ideas. The ability to write and privatize my thoughts gave me a space to experiment and to craft the ideas of my individual identity that is separated from a community identity or from one that I can establish through other’s work. Individual authorship allows gives me the ability to establish ideas as my own. In my academic research, this is important because we are often consumed with the idea of original thought. We enforce citations as a way of attributing authorship and to show which ideas are “originally” ours.
