Process over Product

This week's readings—aptly titled under the heading Process Theory—have my full support in being placed in Villanueva at the start, under the section entitled: “The Givens in Our Conversations: The Writing Process.”

Aside from Elbow and Lowe & Williams, all readings appear in this section for the week and all seven writers deal with a continued look at writing as process rather than product, specifically when teaching “unskilled” freshman writers.

Murray begins with a short, concise, and beautiful call for teaching writing as process and not product and ten implications that can arise from such a paradigm shift. Included in Murray’s implications are that the student will find his/her own subject, that all genres are fair game in the classroom, and—most importantly in my opinion—writing becomes a process of finding alternatives, never adhering to rules. For how short this essay is, I am struck with Murray’s eloquence and “voice,” as Elbow discusses later, throughout.

I have to admit I loved it so much I had to look up Murray on wikipedia, only to find one of his final quotes published five days before his death a few years ago: “Each time I sit down to write I don’t know if I can do it. The flow of writing is always a surprise and a challenge. Click the computer on and I am 17 again, wanting to write and not knowing if I can.” This is so true! Every time I sit down to start “committing” my thoughts into words, I am all at one terrified and exhilarated.

One point I especially find useful in Murray for the rest of this collection in process theory is the Three Stages of Writing. Particularly looking at prewriting, which Murray attributes about 85% of the writer’s time, there is a huge disconnect between what is judged in writing (product) and how to write (process).

Elbow picks up where Murray leaves off (to a point) and suggests a couple methods for teaching writing that will begin to embrace process, assuring that improving product will magnify itself when the students (as a classroom entity) is ready. The first, my pick of the two, “Writing as Producing a Specific Effect in the Reader,” integrates many characteristics of real-life writing into the classroom: it encourages writing for a tangible effect, writing for and within a community, writing that is generated and stimulated by the writer. One caveat I see in this method, however, is that many teachers will be hesitant in adopting this model because, even as Elbow states, it is an excellent model for teachers without conventional “English teacher” training. This is a slippery slope, and one Elbow is much less afraid of than I: if really anyone can sit in a teacher in this setting, why even hire PhDs? Why have class in a classroom? Why have teachers? Why have colleges? Can’t these students just meet on their own time if they are really that interested in improving their writing and clearly don’t benefit from having a teacher? I think obviously we can all agree this is preposterous since learning does not usually happen (especially for “unskilled” writers) in this manner. I don’t know if I would be quite as loose with these standards as Elbow. (Odd metaphor with “elbow” there, eh?)

Our next writer, Janet Emig, emphasizes writing as a process that develops into a heuristic, or method for learning. Interestingly, Emig—as does our next two writers—begins to see the implications of seeing writing as distinct from speaking as it pertains to learning. This is a distinction with which I am extremely interested and one I hope comes up more in the future. Emig’s major point in her article, however, is that the process of writing teaches us more about learning and incorporates multiple methods for understanding our actuality, both hemispheres of our brain, and—to paraphrase from Polanyi—“the person knowing what is being known.”

The next two articles in this week’s sequence provide more empirical studies on the process of writing. Perl significantly makes a contribution to the field by coding the entire process of composition. Studying five “unskilled” writers and coding their experience writing (both on paper and orally) finds that composing is not a linear process but one that continually starts and stops to revise, edit, and change itself. Interestingly, Sommer follows a similar study (coding the writing experiences of student writers) but also juxtaposes this with the coded experience of adult writers. Sommer also finds composition to not be as linear as many believe; however, she also remarks that adult (or “skilled”) writers break up their revision in order to preserve what Perl often finds “unskilled” writers loose: voice. One adult writer even mentions the revision process as similar to turning city-wide generators on and off: “In first and second drafts, I try to cut off as much as I can of my editing generator, and in a third draft, I try to cut off some of my idea generator, so I can make a deadline” (52).

Lowe and Williams end off this week’s reading by suggesting the blog can be an important tool in continuing to view composition as a process, specifically because it can be placed within many different social spaces outside of the academy and offers the student the opportunity to publish their work online. Interesting … do I send such motives latent within our own blogs?