Process Theory

Elbow, Peter. "A Method for Teaching Writing." College English 30:2 (1968): 115-25. 
Murray, Donald M. "Teaching Writing as a Process Not a Product." Villanueva 3-6. 1972. 
Emig, Janet. "Writing as a Mode of Learning." Villanueva 7-16. 1977
Perl, Sandra. "Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers." Villanueva 17-42. 1979.
Sommers, Nancy. "Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers." Villanueva 43-54. (1980)
Lowe, Charles, and Terra Williams. "Moving to the Public: Weblogs in the Writing Classroom" Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. Ed. Laura J. Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff, and Jessica Reyman. June 2004. Web.

Although Elbow’s article comes first in the chronology, I’ll be working my way back to him once I get to the most recent article, Lowe’s and William’s on weblogs. I have two reasons for this approach: 1) Lowe and William specifically refer to Elbow, unsurprisingly, since their defense of blogs reframes many of his own ideas; and 2) Murray’s 1972 article sets the stage for any discussion of process.

Having read many more recent composition theorists who take the concept of process for granted, reading Murray feels surreal. I imagine reading Copernicus’ or Galileo’s defenses of heliocentrism would be analogous experiences. Not all of Murray’s claims do I take for granted though, especially because I read Perl and Sommers so immediately after reading Murray. Murray claims three stages for the writing process: prewriting, writing, and rewriting. Despite his caveat that “the amount of time a writer spends in each stage depends on his personality, his work habits, his maturity as a craftsman, and the challenge of what he is trying to say,” Murray goes on to provide restrictive descriptions of these three stages and their claims on a writer’s time (4). Prewriting accounts for 85% of a writer’s time. By the time this stage is complete, the writer, according to Murray, has a clear sense of audience, form, and subject. Then, in a rush of glory, the first draft appears. This overwhelming and “frightening” experience takes 1% of the total time. Finally, rewriting accounts for the remaining 14%, and constitutes the period during which the writer may reconsider decisions made in the prewriting stage (Murray 4). What a neat description, as tidy as showroom in a furniture store. Unfortunately, at least in my experience, writing is more family-living-room-on-a-busy-weekday than pristine showroom.

It’s not just my experience, neither! Perl’s and Sommers’ studies of both unskilled and experienced writers reveal processes far more similar to my own and those I’ve observed in students. Murray’s description of process is ideal; I wish I worked that way. It would certainly be easier to plan my writing time. But Sommers’ description of experienced writers in particular rings far more true to my less-than-ideal self. To be fair, Sommers focuses solely on revision—rewriting in Murray’s schema—so I shouldn’t use her article to critique his account of prewriting. (Interestingly, although Sommers uses revision in the article title, the experienced writers she quotes use the term rewriting.) What I will take issue with, though, is the idea that the first draft in fact comes first, and the rewriting follows. This contention derives solely from my firsthand writing experiences, which closely echo those of an experienced writer quoted in Sommers: “I rewrite as I write. It is hard to tell what is a first draft because it is not determined by time. In one draft, I might cross out three pages, write two, cross out a fourth, rewrite it, and call it a draft. I am constantly writing and rewriting…” (49). What this writer, and Sommers in turn, hit on that Murray lacks is the concept of reflexivity. Neatly packaging and separating stages of writing blinds the theorist to points at which these stages bleed into each other.

Perl particularly turns her attention to reflexivity in her study and analysis of unskilled college writers. Her concluding paragraph even begins with the claim that “a final implication derives from the preponderance of recursive behaviors in the composing process studied here, and from the theoretical notion derived from these observations: retrospective structuring, or the going back to the sense of one’s meaning in order to go forward and discover more of what one has to say” (Perl 39). This “final implication” helps keep the notion of recursivity from being scuttled by its association with unskilled writers. Originally, recursivity makes an appearance in Perl as a behavior of students unable to move forward in writing without turning back to edit, thereby hanging themselves up on relatively minor concerns even as the major concerns go unaddressed. Peer review sessions in my own classroom have tuned me in to how unskilled writers often do edit long before it is of great use, so I’m inclined to believe the validity of Perl’s observations. (Not to mention that her methodology seems well-justified, consistent, and replicable.) But just because recursivity is misused in this instance does not mean we should throw it out with the bathwater. Instead, as Sommers did, it makes sense to find the uses of it that do work and work well for experienced writers.

On a last note on Villanueva, before I get on with BLOGS!, I originally had little to say about the Emig article. It was churning in my head, but little was coming from it. However, the process of writing this blog post prompted me to realize that, in fact, Emig’s idea of writing as learning could support my iffy-ness about Murray’s emphasis on the 85%-er prewriting stage. As I mentioned last week, this sort of realization is hardly unusual. I almost always only figure out what I think after writing for a while about what I think I think. If nothing else, this trait gives me the chops to tell students they need to get comfortable deleting huge chunks of writing—I do it all the time, because most of my initial writings turn out to just be a warm up, or brush-clearing, or whatever metaphor you please. Murray’s prewriting as merely “research and daydreaming, note-making and outlining” bears little resemblance to my process (4). These things happen, but the draft they lead to does not appear as a final thing that I can then merely rewrite. Emig’s concept of writing as a mode of learning comes much closer to describing the way in which getting stuff onto paper helps me create new connections, ideas, and conclusions. Granted, there's always the question of how much I can rely on my own experiences as criteria of validity for theories of composition, but that's a post for another day.

So now, let’s turn our attention instead to the funfunfun topic of the week, the blogosphere! Please excuse my irreverent and fun-focused tone. I’m awfully self-aware of both after having read Lowe’s and William’s article about how awesome blogging is for students and then having to turn around and write a blog post. The fun, perhaps, is a good place to start though. It struck me throughout the article how invested the authors are in tapping into some sense of fun that they associate with online writing activities like emailing and MMORPGs. I agree that students learn best when they are in some way connected, and enjoyment can create a sense of connection that coursework could otherwise lack. There’s a smacking of fun-for-fun’s sake here, however, which I’m not completely sold on. How important is it really for students to commiserate with each other when they have sprained ankles? Does enjoyment necessarily lead to learning? Please don’t misunderstand. I do hope you’re enjoying reading this blog post. But the enjoyment of it is probably a different kind of enjoyment than that of checking facebook or blasting away the Alliance on WoW. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I think it would behoove us to question what kind of fun we want our students to have and whether all kinds serve pedagogical goals.

Speaking of pedagogical goals, hey expressivism! What’s up with you these days? I see you making an appearance in arguments in favor of blogging: “Peter Elbow (1998), himself, arrived at freewriting as a means of escape from the anxieties created by a history of writing instruction. Private writing created a comfortable place where he could find himself as a writer; public writing through weblogging can do the same” (Lowe and Williams). Fancy seeing you round here. Honestly, I kind of thought that the public, collaborative, social nature of blogs would just give you a straight-up cold shoulder. But I suppose you and public writing share that real drive to "deemphasiz[e] teacher authority" (Lowe and Williams). Careful, though. Those blog-happy authors might pull the rug out from under you: "We still suspect that our field’s expressivist heritage may lead many writing teachers to put the private unnecessarily in front of the public, partially because writing teachers are themselves more comfortable with the private" (Lowe and Williams). I wouldn’t worry overmuch, though, if I were you. I think they’re still pretty interested in a lot of the same things you are: the true voice thing, you know, “writing as revealing the author’s self in his words” (Elbow 119), and creating writing situations in which “student writing [can] be designed to produce a specific piece of overt behavior in a reader” (Elbow 116). How funny. I think I just figured out that expressivism knows how to dress up as social constructionism. Neat trick!

The thing is, a claim like "our student bloggers regularly confront “real” rhetorical situations in a very social, supportive setting" parses as an overly idealistic and utterly unrealistic view of blogs. Isn’t there something a bit disingenuous about putting “real” in those handy quotation marks? What is the difference anyway between real and “real”? My sense is that blogs make the classroom dynamic simply less apparent. I buy that blogs can deauthorize the instructor, thereby empowering students to make rhetorical decisions at least removed from, even if not completely outside of, the evaluative classroom framework. They can even make the built-in classroom “community” feel more like an actual community, which gets it closer to being an actual audience. But as for students engaging in “real” rhetorical situations? Frankly, Elbow hits that nail a bit more squarely, with his suggestion of bringing outsiders into the classroom. That’s real, real in a way that the minute chance of a stranger reading your blog and entering a conversation with you is not.

But we’re not talking about writing communities or audiences this week. We’re talking about the writing process. So just to bring it back, here’s where Lowe and Williams themselves make the connection between blogs and process: "Some would point to other student web texts—zines and student websites—and suggest that they, too, can accomplish the same goals without the need to share drafts and other exploratory writing, that students can wait until a finished product is ready to share publicly. Yet, we feel that such texts diminish the process of drafting and do not create discourse about the drafting process in the same way that making the entire process public does. In only publishing the final draft—such as in the case of many zine projects and student websites that we have seen—isn’t this practice overly valuing the final product and, in doing so, also undercutting writing process pedagogy?"

Dear public, wouldn’t you like to engage in my process and leave me a comment about this unfinished work?

Other Unfinished Thoughts: 
 The web is crawling with trolls ready to personally attack any speaker. Granted, they tend to congregate in more public settings (Youtube, online papers), so perhaps students are safe. Who then is finding these texts?

"And even though this speculation about the positive aspects of public writing may disrupt established thoughts on what should be public and private, it is not out of line with collaborative process views." Well that's dismissive.

Different take on invention. Dan Cohen (of digital humanities fame) has a crowdsourced book.

"Below, we show that using weblogs in our classrooms has been more effective for at least some of our students because it has increased participation:  our quieter students who typically don’t participate in face-to-face discussions are participating in weblog discussions." Drew's project: Tin Can Classroom.