Y'all, from now on, I totally want my blog post titles to be pertinent song lyrics. I just decided this is a thing I'm doing now. This week's title is from "Closer to Fine" by the Indigo Girls!
After I read Muriel Harris' piece, I came to the conclusion that I'm usually a multi-draft writer. I have a "preference for beginning at an exploratory stage" (180) and a "preference for open-ended exploring" (182). I also have a tendency to resist closure (184). In some cases, though, I prefer it. Usually this when I'm writing about something I don't care about (which thankfully is rare these days) or when I don't have the time or energy to think about it anymore. I sometimes get "impatient to finish" (185) and it's satisfying to feel completely done with a piece of writing, even if I decide to revisit it later.
Even though I usually describe myself as a multi-draft writer, I'm kind of torn between the two extremes. This makes sense... as Harris says, the drafting process is a broad spectrum and the majority of writers fall somewhere in the middle.
" . . . all the evidence we have and, more importantly, our own experience tells us that most writers are not one or the other but exist somewhere between these two ends of the continuum." (178)
I'm trying to keep this in mind, but it's still interesting to consider how to categorize myself based on Harris' exploration. I think I'm a multi-draft writer because I've grown as a writer. Like all y'all, I've been in college studying writing and rhetoric for years. Multi-drafting is a pretty recent development: before college I was mostly a one-drafter. For example, at the beginning of the writing process, I never felt comfortable writing to discover what I thought. I had to discover what I thought, and then write, like Amy.
"Amy explained that she sometimes felt that in high school or as an undergraduate she should have written outlines to please her teachers, but she never did get around to it because outlines served no useful purpose for her." (181)
I used to feel super insecure about writing outlines, and I still don't like it. At least, I don't like the traditional outlines I learned about pre-college. The ones that usually look like this. I mostly ignore that stuff these days and outline however I want, usually with some kind of stream of consciousness freewriting process. I think this is similar to the idea of pre-text writing described on page 175.
I honestly love the process of "rewriting," as Don Murray puts it. I like experimenting with revision, even when it's hard. It's a fun challenge! I agree with what Murray says at the beginning of his piece, that rewriting isn't " . . . seen as a burden but as an opportunity by many writers" (123). I think I enjoyed reading his piece more than Harris' but both of them are valuable and interesting in their own ways. I usually value rewriting/multi-drafting more than one-drafting, so it's easy for me to connect to Murray here. But I don't think one process is inherently better than the other. There's also a lot of overlap and it depends on the writing context!
I think Murray's section on "The Implications for Teaching" is super cool. Here he presents a list of things educators should consider while teaching writing. I value a lot of these ideas, especially the start of the list, when he says that "students classified as slow may simply have the illusion writers know what they are going to say before they say it" (140). Hell yeah! "Stupid kids may not be stupid" is kind of an obvious statement, but this was written in 1978, and a lot of writing teachers are still ignorant about this stuff today. I also love the last line of his piece.
"The better we understand how people write - how people think - the better we may be able to write and to teach writing." (142)
Addie, Patrick, Elise and I are all in Karen Uehling's nonfiction class right now. Like Elise mentioned in their post, it's interesting to analyze the process of revision in two different classes at the same time. These are actually the only two classes I'm taking this semester. It's kind of strange and beautiful. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed that I have to think about my writing process so intensely, but it makes sense to explore this stuff more as we reach the end of our undergraduate experience. Introspection is a valuable ability! I really appreciate the opportunity I have this semester to push it further.
So much smart stuff here, Rebekah. I especially appreciated your careful reading of the two pieces. As I was reading your description of how you've evolved as a writer, moving from one-draft habits to embracing multi-drafting and developing a deeper appreciation for writing as discovery, I kept thinking that this seemed like a developmental arc that many writers go through. A few weeks ago, we read a bunch of stuff about epistemological development, and one of the concepts was that dualists and relativists see the world as either black and white or so subjective that arriving at some kind of truth is impossible. For people who hold this view, ambiguity and uncertainty is really unthinkable because it involves unnecessary confusion. Why not just find someone who knows! Revision (and particularly multi-draft revision) works from a different premise: our understanding of anything evolves. One should never trust quick judgments. So I read your narrative along those lines, as the story of a writer/thinker with an increasingly sophisticated way of seeing the world and writing process. It is cool to reflect on that, especially now!
ReplyDeleteHi Rebekah, thanks for your post. I have a tendency to resist closure too, and I don't know that I really have any truly finished pieces. I love that we get to choose and there's not really a set natural ending to which we must arrive. I find the outline you've hyperlinked helpful with outlining persuasive and informative speeches, and that's about it. I avoided outlining my essays too, but am wondering if I should give it a go this summer, before I truly write it off. A few semesters ago, I created an outline for a post-draft in a fiction class to help me see where I might want to insert or reorganize my story to be most interesting for the reader, but obviously that doesn't really work with nonfiction, as we write what we know, not whatever we feel like. However, as I think about it... this kind of outlining might be helpful in nonfiction for best organizing instructional or informational material. I'm ranting. I also agree that the "stupid" kids aren't usually so, they're just nervous and unsure of their abilities, and therefore apprehensive to give it an honest go.
ReplyDeleteRebekah,
ReplyDeleteI understand your desire to resist closure. I find myself struggling with closure particularly when it's a piece I'm engaged with or enjoy or feel strongly about. However, on a piece of writing I don't have that attachment to, I find myself very linear in my writing style and struggling not to write that stereotypical essay they teach in English 101 thats just a basic outline with some words stuffed in-between. I can always tell when I'm struggling with a piece and it's not turning out the way I want because I find myself resorting to outlining the pertinent information and for me thats always a key sign that something isn't "working"