What is Writing?

Before reading Billy Collins commencment address I associated writing with stories and telling someone something that they’re interested in, giving people something that makes them want to keep reading. Successful writing to me would be being proud of what you wrote and not wanting to change anything about the peice because it was perfect. If I were to write something myself I could see myself writing something that would sound more like a conversation between me and my reader. I would not like to be super professional writer, it would just be more fun for me this way. After reading the commencment address, I learned that this speech had so many more readers and listeners than expected when it was written. The intended audience was high school students but the real audience was the teachers, families, and everyone else who read this speech after it was given. In my opinion, this speech is very successful, but not in the way I described earlier. The speech is successful because it reached so many more people than the theoretical audience it was intended for. I was asked to create a list of terms that I thought defined writing. My terms were appeal, detail, characters, hook, and imagery. After reading and talking about this text I would add audience, genre, and interperation.