Whenever I professors or tutors talk about writing, they always seem to emphasize starting in advance, doing multiple drafts, lots of peer review...etc. And it's fine to say all that. But sometimes...like this weekend...I feel really hypocritical. I had to go to a wedding in Ohio over the weekend, so I got no homework done. I have an essay due today...yeah, it's not written. Is it completely horrible that I can't do what I tell other students to do, like start early and plan and write it way before it's due? I remember WRT 353, where several of the other tutors-in-training said they never write project until the day or night or even morning before it's due. How can we do that but say other things?
This has been on my mind for a while, especially whenever we talk about a community of practice. I often don't write unless it's for a class, and even then I'm really good at procrastinating. Could we perhaps use the community to encourage each other to break these habits? Just some of my thoughts...
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I'll confess to being mostly a one-draft wonder, too, if it helps. This said, I know the difference that a really good process can make.
ReplyDeleteI find that my arguments have to be cooked for a while before they get really good; if I share them too early, they're often pretty unpleasant reading. There's a paradox, though: it's only by sharing my drafts that I get the real "cooking" started. So, over the years, I've fed bad stuff to a number of my friends (and colleagues, especially in the review process).
Ultimately, I think the result is good (or at least better than it would have been). I'm not sure I start early, but the process does take a lot of time. This, then, is the option I want to offer to others: your writing *can* be better if you engage it as a process.
I agree with what's been said. The point is not to tell students it's bad that they come into the writing center with their first draft and the paper is due tomorrow (that's what all three of my tutees did today). I think the idea is to help students pinpoint their own process. All we can do is share what has worked for each of us personally. Hopefully our sessions can spark that process.
ReplyDeleteI, too, have been guilty of this. And, like URIWCenter I have come to learn through utilizing collaboration (peers, colleagues, friends, anyone)that my writing improves because of the feedback and insights I receive from other writers/readers.
ReplyDeleteStill, I suspect that allowing time to engage in these collaborative practices is not necessary what is meant at times by "process": it is certainly a piece of process, but not the totality of what process is, or can do for a piece of writing. Again, URIWCenter noted "writing *can* be better if you engage it as a process"--and, indeed it can.
But, I think at times we (as instructors/peer reviewers)do a less effective job of stressing the *can*. In other words, process is not necessarily congruent with successful writing, and in fact, can at times lead to counter productive moments in the composition process.
I have at times had what was *I thought* a pretty decent piece going, only to overwrite/rewrite something to the point it was so much worse that I had to go back and revisit the previous draft to reassemble what a paragraph or section of a paper had set out to achieve. If we, as I have learned, convey that hard work and engaging the process approach is potential means to success, not a guaranteed route, and that process can encompass very many different things, I think we provide students with knowledge that might deflect potential debilitating frustrations away from those moments in the process where their writing takes a swing in the wrong direction.
Again, processes entail steps and stumbles forward and backward: avoiding romanticized notions of what the process approach is/achieves/enables students to do with their writing seems to be a good first movement towards engaging this strategy.
This is a really interesting subject, and my entry perhaps echoes the replies that emerged before mine. I guess Jessica brings up two points for me, someone who was, in accordance with all ways of measuring such things, a "bad" student for half of her undergraduate studies (let's just say I thought there were far more significant matters than textbooks, literature excluded). When I have, over time, tried to explain to various graduate professors how and why this happened, I came up with a plethora of explanations and interpretations none of which could quite convey or pinpoint a definitive "because." But, what I determined a while back, through these explanations, and continue to maintain to this day is that having been "there" and done "that" was a tremendously formative aspect to the ways in which I think right now and to the ways in which I approach my students. Yes, I share my former "badness" at times not to say "look! I turned out fine!...I think..." but perhaps to let them know that there are ways of balancing desires and requirements in different ways, that all the "talks" we/they get about regretting decisions and making the best of the college experience and of our/themselves do not need to skew our/their vision in favor of one side or the other, that schoolwork need not be antithetical to something that we/they want to do. So, the second point: the way of thinking about "procrastination" for instance, the management not only of time but of desires, of objectives seems to me quite significant to the process of experimentation as the practice of critical thinking and writing (to me these are essentially the same). I think that it is important to inhabit the concepts that we speak of and not just repeat maxims that cannot possibly be without the life that animates them.
ReplyDeleteThis post made me laugh out loud, in a good way. I completely agree. I tend to procrastinate a great deal of my written work, and always feel bad telling my students towrite multiple drafts. However, look at it this way: you may have never struggled with writing and these students clearly do because they are asking for help. Perhaps, you are not being hypocritical because you have never NEEDED to write multiple drafts.
ReplyDelete