My Writing Process/3rd week in the DubC

I didn’t get a chance to do an observation this week; it was realllyyy slooowwww both times I was there.  It was a good week though.  I spent quite a bit of time manning the desk, and ended up greeting a few people as they came in, and starting files for a couple of new writers.

So, I’d like to postpone my post on observation till next week, and focus more on the things we read.  The reading from The Bedford Guide especially got me thinking about my own writing process.

Prewriting:

I really don’t do much prewriting.  I usually just start writing with the knowledge that my structure and even thesis is really fluid—I rearrange clauses, sentences, and paragraphs on a whim until I find an organization that I like.  Once, I started with one thesis, and then realized that the entire following essay was arguing against it.  So the thesis changed.  Sometimes I’ll write a sentence or idea that I like but don’t know where to put, so I open another document and stick those ideas there, ready to copy-paste them into the essay when I find a good spot for them.

The only time I really felt like actual prewriting helped me was when I was working on an essay in my Nonfiction Writing class.  I had decided to write a segmented essay, a structure I had just found out about and really wanted to try.  The essay was about my experiences in community theatre and what goes on backstage that the audience doesn’t know about.  I had the vague idea that I would start out each segment with a story from my time in community theatre.  So I started writing those stories, saved in a Word document called “essay pieces.”  Through writing those stories, I got a concrete idea about what each segment would be talking about.  I eventually decided that each segment would be about a different facet of community theatre:  play practice, inter-cast relationships, auditions, getting into character, etc.   That essay turned out to be, in my opinion, the best thing I’d ever written up to that point.

In thinking of that experience, it occurs to me that I should try out more formal prewriting when I start a piece.

Writing:

As I said, my actual writing tends to sort of meld with my prewriting.  If I can, I like to get my whole first draft out at one time.  My ideas tend to change a lot, so if I write half of a paper at one point, and come back to it the next day, the second half of the paper sometimes goes in a different direction.  If I can get a whole first draft out at one time, when I come back the next day I can revise the whole paper to fit the newer, more mature ideas.  This works fine for shorter papers, but tends to be a grueling process for anything longer than 4 or 5 pages.  On one memorable 10-pager, I started work at about 6pm, and wrote, with a couple cat naps, until 5 am.  Then I slept for 3 hours, woke up for my 8:40 class, and then came home to revise.  That was my community theatre paper.  Super intense.

Revising and Editing:

The Bedford Guide mentions two types of revision: global and sentence-level.  I don’t do much on the way of sentence-level revision.  A lot of that happens while I’m actually writing, and I often spent a lot of time on each sentence and paragraph to get the wording right.  When I come back and revise, I correct typos, adjust some punctuation, and change a few words here and there, but rarely rewrite whole sentences.  I also often ending up adding transitions between paragraphs, which I never do a good job of the first time around.

My global revision usually involves adjusting my thesis to reflect the direction I ended up going in the paper, and sometimes involves rearranging or adding entire paragraphs. 

Then I give it to someone else to tell me if everything makes sense and what they think of it.  Then I revise it again, and usually have someone look at it again.

That’s the first time I’ve looked so hard at my writing process and….it is decidedly odd.  I think I need to prewrite more….




p.s.: Sorry I posted this blog late!