While reading Rose this past week, I was amused by his
students’ stories and their problems with writer’s block. I know I have
encountered a number of these issues when writing myself. This last week,
though, I had paper for one of my lit classes. I was having trouble starting
it, so I did my usual thing: write out the prompt, underline the question, list
a few things. But something happened. Well, actually nothing happened. I couldn’t
start writing. I blame all the readings we’ve done in this class. I was sitting
in the SIL tutoring room, frustrated and annoyed, listening to one of my colleagues
help a student with her essay when I decided to start clustering—couldn’t hurt,
right? I figured I needed a big map, so I tried it. I started seeing
relationships between the examples that I needed to use form. At some point I
wrote a rudimentary thesis statement in the corner somewhere. I’d argue that my
process, thus far, has been a myriad of rules—which include procrastination. Like
Rose’s student, Martha, I like structure—even a messy structure, so I was never
drawn to clustering. I don’t what grade I will get, but I finished the paper. I
was a lot more confident when I was planning it than when I wrote it, so the
readings lied –insert angry emoji here-. Is that normal? Did I miss a step? I
certainly didn’t do as much of the invention work as I did for the literacy autobiography,
but when I was done with my paper, I didn’t feel a sense of accomplishment or satisfaction
with the end product.
I have been thinking a lot about my process too, trying to name it mostly. I became frustrated (and worried) when I couldn't point to any specific, or consistent, way I began my papers. And, I was really struggling with an assignment due this week. It took me FOREVER to get started, and then every sentence after that was just as hard.
ReplyDeleteWhen it was all done, I spent some time reflecting on what the issue was and surprised myself with the answer: I didn't have sufficient knowledge with the material I was writing about--even though I thought I had. Basically I was trying to write a 4 page paper and had only about 1 page worth of material. I concluded that, for me, I need to focus on the invention part of the process before sitting down to pre-write. Learning this about my writing practice was very helpful.
Well,
ReplyDelete1. Don't judge based on your level of confidence in the final product; this can be extremely deceptive.
2. Try it a different way next time. Think of your writing process as EXPERIMENTAL rather than FIXED, and you'll certainly lower some of your affective boundaries.
How the Pros Do It
What forty years of research about writing shows us is that there are seven primary differences between successful writers and unsuccessful writers:
1. Successful writers have developed a number of different heuristics for the invention process, while unsuccessful writers tend to have few heuristics or none.
2. Successful writers don't wait around for inspiration; they get something down on paper as fast as they can.
3. Successful writers make a plan before they write, but their plans are flexible and subject to revision.
4. This plan is, almost always, a rhetorical plan: that is, a plan that has a particular purpose and audience in mind and keeps the writer aware of that purpose and that audience. In other words, "I'm going to write about Parkinson's disease" is not sufficient.
5. The plan does not go into an enormous amount of detail concerning the actual content of the writing. That is, successful writers usually don't know exactly what they are going to write before they start, and they trust the writing process itself to help generate their material.
6. Successful writers revise much more than unsuccessful writers do. They revise while they are writing, and they expect to do at least two drafts of any particular piece of writing.
7. Unsuccessful writers tend to make only lower-order (word- and sentence-level) changes during the revision process, while successful writers tend to make higher-level, conceptual changes.
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ReplyDeletegclub
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