Understanding writing processes

MOST OF THE TIME WHEN WE READ SOMETHING, we get no clue as to what the writer went through to write it. If it is easy to read, that could mean it was easy to write -- practically wrote itself, as some writers say -- or easy reading could mean the writer sweated mightily to make it easy reading. If it is hard to read, that could mean the writer struggled with difficult material, or possibly the writer just didn't care to help readers read more easily.

One might think that composition class is the place where students should learn how to go about writing papers -- which it is -- but all teachers who assign writing would profit from being aware of process. When there are problems with a paper, the problems can often be traced back to the process by which the paper was written.

Twenty-five and thirty years ago, composition scholars and teachers spoke of "the writing process" as if there were only one kind of process, and as if writers always started at the beginning and worked through to the end -- almost like following a formula. It didn't take long for the experts to realize that the model was far too simplistic. Writers proceed in many ways; processes vary from writer to writer and from one writing task to the next.

Writing processes are usually considered to have five main stages, called prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading. It is helpful to further group them into early and later stages. Prewriting and drafting are early. They lead up to the first complete draft, the point where the writer has all the raw material down and is ready to work on it. Revising, editing, and proofreading are later stages. During these stages the writing is clarified and made ready to leave the writer's hands and go out on its own.

Early stages: Prewriting and Drafting

Prewriting. Prewriting, broadly speaking, is whatever the writer does before writing the first draft. Writers working in the prewriting stage can exhibit many forms of behavior. They might sit down and make lists, draw idea maps or outlines, lie down and take a nap, dig in the garden, go to the library and check out armloads of books, download reams of material off the Internet, or churn out pages of stream- of-consciousness freewriting.

None of these activities could be called either good or bad ways to proceed. Even writers who start with a nap might be recharging their batteries or incubating ideas (John McPhee keeps a day bed in his New Yorker office for precisely that purpose). What works for one writer might not work for another. What works for a writer one time might not work for the same writer another time.

When writers pay too little attention to prewriting, they plunge into the first draft before it is adequately planned. With luck they will get through the draft and it will be pretty good. But they're just as likely to find they've painted themselves into a corner and are unable to get out. And, equally likely, they end up with a finished product that is under- developed or poorly organized, or both.

The term "prewriting" is useful as a generic term for what goes on before the first draft. But a better name for really productive prewriting might be "the writing before the writing." Most writers are better off if they can think of the first writing they do on an assignment not as the beginning of the draft, but as exploration and rehearsal. It's not easy to persuade some writers to think this way; writing comes so hard that they can t accept the possibility that everything they write isn't going directly into the final product.

Those who are reluctant to use writing as discovery might be reminded of E. M. Forster's quip, "How can I know what I think until I see what I say?" There comes a point where planning will do no more good, even when the paper is not completely planned out yet. Most writers come to a point where they need to stop making lists or outlines, or sitting around thinking, and start writing just to see what happens. The result might be a false start, but it might be the beginning of a real draft.

Drafting. Drafting is the stage where the writer may feel most alone. A writer can choose to talk with other people about plans for the paper and talk about the draft after it s written. But during drafting the writer has to be left alone to think.

The issue a writer faces when starting to draft is, where do I start? Some kinds of writing, such as technical reports, require certain parts to be written before other parts. The introduction of a report must be in good order before the writer can go on, because it sets forth the question to be investigated, and if the introduction isn't clear the investigation itself will be unfocused. The review of literature has to come next, then the research design, then the findings, then the discussion, then the conclusion. None of these parts can be written in any other order. For instance, the writer can t possibly know what to say in the discussion section before the research project has been designed and conducted and the findings are known.

There are plenty of other instances, however, in academic and other writing, when the order of drafting doesn't matter. Here individual temperaments differ. Some writers cannot proceed in any other order than from beginning to end. Others start with whatever part they feel most ready to write, then proceed on to the harder parts -- which get easier once the easy writing is done.

Writers also differ in regard to how polished they want to make their drafts as they proceed. Some cannot move on to the next sentence until the sentence they have just written is perfect. They have to stop and get every word right. They fiddle with word choices and word orders until the sentences says exactly what they want in exactly the right way. Other writers are more comfortable just blurting it all out, then going back later to make the writing precise and polished. When they reach the end of the drafting they can say, "Well, it's a mess, but at least it's all there and I can begin to work on it." Either method might be the best one for writers of differing temperaments. But some writers need to try to be less perfectionist as they go along so that they don t bog down, and some need to be more attentive to precision so that their drafts aren t too much of a mess.

Unfortunately, the completion of the draft is where some student writers stop. They are really only at the midpoint of the process, but they think they are done because they have filled the requisite number of pages with words. Or they have only allowed themselves time to get this far, and the deadline has arrived. Thus teachers find themselves forced to read a lot of papers that are only first drafts.

The end of the drafting stage, though, is indeed a good place to stop -- temporarily. Writers usually should not plunge right into revision. They need time to get some distance from the writing so they can come back to it with fresh eyes. Oregon writer Kim Stafford even suggests that this might be called a major stage in the process: "Get it out. Get it away from you." This is a good time to bring the draft to the writing center. If students are writing for a class involved in The Write Project, then a hiatus is built into the process. For a week the draft is out of the writers hands, getting feedback from a Writing Assistant. When the writers get their drafts back, they benefit not only from the WA s comments but from seeing their drafts after some time has elapsed.

Later stages: Revising, Editing, Proofreading

Revising. Composition teachers like to call this stage re-envisioning. It is often the most important part of the writing process. Researchers in writing find that the revision stage is where many writers finally discover and clarify what they want to say. Professional writers sometimes call it the stage where the writing really begins. Less experienced writers tend to skip the revision stage, or they mistake it for editing and only work on small-scale changes, which are easier to handle than rethinking the whole paper.

For rethinking is what it takes to do an effective job with revision. Writers need to give the draft the third degree to see whether it delivers on its promises. Some writers eyeball the whole draft in a quick pass, skipping from paragraph to paragraph to get an overall picture. They make the big changes, then go over the draft in several more passes, each time looking for smaller and smaller details. Other writers make only a couple of passes, but in doing so they are constantly zooming in and out, big picture to detail and back again. They can do this because they have the knack for keeping the big picture in mind while focusing on small details -- something not all of us can do without a lot of practice.

Revision does take practice, like any other part of the writing process. Virtually all good writers are effective, practiced revisers. At the revising stage, writers have the chance to make up for any deficiencies in their prewriting or drafting. They can gather more source material, generate new ideas. They can throw out the whole draft and start over, if necessary. Unfortunately, many student writers are reluctant to revise in any substantial way, even those who bring their drafts to the writing center. Or, even if they are willing to do major revising, they have not allowed themselves enough time for it. The resulting papers can be as weak as those that have not been revised at all.

Editing. Editing might be misunderstood as the stage of merely correcting -- fixing errors in diction, grammar, and punctuation. Those are extremely important when it comes to the impression the writing is going to make on its intended audience. But editing is also where writers most often work on style, on choosing the best words (not just correct ones), and on organizing sentences so that each one has focus and emphasis and so that all the sentences work together coherently.

Proofreading. Proofreading might seem too trivial to be called a major stage in the process, but writers need to bear in mind that faulty proofreading is the first thing readers notice. A text free of proofreading errors will not have any particular positive effect on readers, but one with errors can damage the writer's ethos and thus lose credibility with the reader. The fact that student writers so often neglect proofreading or don't know how to do it effectively is justification for calling it a major stage of the process.

Proofreading, in the not-so-distant past, involved mostly spelling. Now that almost everyone uses word processors with spell checkers, spelling is no longer much of an issue. But many student writers seem to assume that with spell checkers, they don't have to put so much time and effort into proofreading. Proofreading, on the contrary, has to be done as carefully as ever. In the computer age, it focuses on a different target: what might be called the wrong word syndrome. Spell checkers accept any word they have in their dictionaries as long as it is spelled right. Inattentive writers might not pay close enough attention to what their spell checkers are doing. Consequently, student papers come in with such errors as coat for cost, archive for achieve.

Proofreading and editing also require writers to pay attention to format and documentation. It is at these later stages that most writers choose to work on the appearance of their papers, formatting them to conform to MLA, APA, CBE, Chicago/Turabian, or some other prescribed format. Format and design correspond to the division of rhetoric called delivery. In speech, delivery is concerned with the elements of oral performance: voice quality, pitch, pacing, gesture, etc. On paper, delivery is concerned with the appearance of the document and how it visually makes contact with the reader. Even in academic writing, students have some opportunities to make choices of fonts, graphics, and white space.

Processes in academic writing

To some degree all writing processes are messy, and they are all recursive, looping back to earlier stages in the midst of later stages. Sometimes the writing task will tell the writer how to proceed. Other times, a writer may have to try different strategies. Writers always have to follow the principle, Do what works.

Those who teach or tutor writing, when consulting with writers about their papers, often ask, "How did you go about writing this? Take me through your process." By learning how writers went about writing, they can suggest alternate strategies. They can diagnose poor writing habits and suggest new ones.

Teachers of history, sociology, construction management, economics, engineering -- any field where writing is important -- can do the same. They know the writing of their disciplines and the writing processes that work best. They know how to gather information; how to think about the information; how to organize it; what sections the finished product must have; how to think about the occasion, audience, and purpose of the writing. Their students do not yet know these things about particular disciplines and need to learn them.

Teachers interested in learning more about how their students are working can ask students to attach a Writer's Memo (WW#44) to their papers, explaining what they went through to achieve the final product, what they think works, and what they would still like to improve of they had more time or knew how.

RL

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