Week One: The Writing Process

As I read the readings for this week, I found myself comparing my  own writing processes with those mentioned. I'm afraid that, although I do a great deal of writing for school, my own personal writing has suffered since I began this program. My process is now different. My writing process, which I honed while I completed my undergraduate English degree with an emphasis in writing, involves constant revision. This remains the same for academic writing as it does for more creative endeavors; I have revised the previous sentence three times already, and I have not come close to finishing this piece. For academic writing, I generally outline (or "game plan", as Dornan, et. al. refer to it) and then write. Also, for academic writing, I revise more intensely while I write in addition to after I have finished. I believe this is because I believe that the strength of my arguments is in their logical presentation: the ideas must flow directly from one another. Most of this "flow" is organized in my mind, and in case it isn't or in case I need to remind myself of where I'm going, I have the outline there for a guide. Since I have entered graduate school, this seems to be the only type of writing I have time or motivation for. Whereas I used to write quite a bit of poetry, some short stories, and even the beginnings of novels, I now usually write in response to an assignment, a question that someone has posed for me to answer. If I sound wistful about this, it is only because I feel a moral obligation to be wistful about it. In reality, writing is much easier when someone else is choosing the topics for you, when someone else has given you a set deadline and format. Even this blog assignment now feels just a little too ambiguous for my well-trained tastes. 

This causes me to wonder, then, whether Dornan, et. al, and Culham are right suggest that students should be allowed to select their own topic. If I were to receive an assignment to write about anything I choose, I would indeed spend a great deal more time thinking about such an assignment than I would if I were assigned a topic. This amount of thought is of course the point of writing in the first place, but as teachers, aren't we supposed to make writing less intimidating for the students? Surely the goal is to get students motivated and confident enough to write on their own, and to take the risks that this type of writing entails, but what about the students who need a lot of support to build this motivation and confidence? Although both texts offer a variety of possible topics for the students, they advise that the teacher not assign these topics so that the students will write for an audience beyond the teacher. This last goal is also very important if the students are to take their writing skills with them into the real world, but the question remains: how are we, as teachers, to encourage our students to write beyond the classroom while simultaneously providing them with the support they need to write at all? Is it a "stepped" thing? That is, do we first make them comfortable in the classroom and then teach them to take their writing beyond it? And if this is so, aren't the five paragraph essay written on assigned topics actually great places for intimidated writers to start? 

I'm not certain as to the answers to these questions, and I would welcome any suggestions. 

Resource Link:

www.thisibelieve.org

This series, originally taped for NPR in the fifties, has recently returned to NPR. The series consists of essays, which are basically personal mission statements. This site has audio recordings, as well as written archives, of essays that have been featured. It also has a link for teachers to lesson plans and ways to incorporate this type of writing into the classroom. Perhaps this is a way to solve the guidance/freedom conundrum I mentioned above: the students have a general topic with numerous different directions to go in.