Every person has their own individual identity. That identity can be very clear through an author’s writing. The way an author begins writing, as mentioned by Lunsford, is a good example of identity. In Lunsford’s article, “Writing is Informed by Prior Experience”, it is mentioned that “even when writing is private or meant for the writer alone, it is shaped by the writers earlier interactions with writing and with other people and with all the writer has read and learned.” Lunsford then brings up examples like learning to write your own name and left-handed writers being told to sit on their left hands in order to learn to write with their right hand. When you have an identity with writing, which we all do, there is almost automatically a sense of authority just by the way the writing is being perceived by their audience. For example, a left-handed writer who writes about their upbringing of being forced to write with their right hand has authority in their writing because their experiences match the topic they are writing about.
In Yancey’s article, “Writers’ Histories, Processes, and Identities Vary”, she states “…each writer begins a lifelong process of balancing individual perspectives and processes with the opportunities, demands, constraints, and genres of specific rhetorical situations and contexts of the larger culture.” This supports the idea that since birth, a writer will begin to have experiences and perspectives that will ultimately show in the author’s writing.
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