2.25 Talking about Elbow + work on the process narrative

Below are the questions we used to frame the discussion of Elbow.  
How did Elbow use his writing diary?
What does he mean by writing that growing writing is not just producing words and throwing some away? (p. 32)
What was hardest for Elbow about his writing process?  What's hardest for you?
What are some of the realizations Elbow arrived at from watching his writing process? (p. 36)
What does he mean by thinking about writing in terms of a developmental model?  Do you believe in this idea?  (p.44)
What are your "stages" for writing a "long" assignment?

We focused on the chapter about growing your writing, the chapter on the drafting process.  Elbow takes a developmental approach to writing, thinks of the writing process as organic, emphasizes that writing is a place where you discover what you have to say, and points out that although there is some chaos (discomfort) in writing when you don't know what you have to say - that is they way writing often works.

Although process theory can make writing seem like it is linear - starting with invention, moving through invention, and then proceeding through revision and editing - Elbow's discussion points out that for many if not most of us it is much messier. Still, even though they are much more mixed up, it remains useful to talk about writing process in terms of figuring out ideas (finding what we have to say) = invention; drafting (getting what we have to say into some approximation of the form we want to use to say it); and revision (refining, sharpening and in some cases completely changing the form and content of what we have written through adding, deleting, substituting and rearranging our draft).

Elbow's chapter put us in a good position to talk about the process narrative (see assignment sheet posted to the right) which is what we spent the rest of class working on.  First we did some writing on the revision process for the literacy narrative (so you have some evidence of your process for revising).  The prompts we used are listed below.

Writing about revision
What was your overall stragetgy for revising?
(respond to feedback from Chandler?  from peers? check whether you met the requirements on the assignment sheet? correct/errors?  read for the overall "flow" of the essay? some combination of these?) Write as much as you can about how you acted on that strategy, step by step.
Did you use one strategy at a time, or everything at once?  For example, did you revise for focus, then for organization, and then for development, and then proofread?  Or everything at once?
What role did finding your focus play in the revision process (did your draft still leave you in the "chaos" phase described by Elbow - or did you already have a strong focus from the draft and just work on sharpening that focus)?
How did you handle the invention that you needed to do in your revising process?
If you needed to draft additional sections, how did you manage going back and forth between re-reading what you'd already written and writing additional sections?
What were the most important changes you made?  What was the most frequent "kind" of revision you made: addition, deletion, substitution, reorganization
How did you feel as you revised?

After a short discussion, we took a look at the assignment sheet, and noted that one of the requirements was to reflect on how your writing process was changing, and to think about how you might want to further change it in the future.  Rather than have you reflect in a general way on how your process has changes, you did some writing about your process from HS and college.  The prompts are listed below.

How is your writing process changing/growing?  
how did you write in high school?  for English papers?  for research paper?
How did you write when you came to college (college english)?  Were the changes you made successful?  Any changes you feel you might need to make?
Describe your writing process for writing a long paper.  Were you successful? Was it stressful?  What might you need to change?

After you wrote to these prompts, we listed some words to describe your process for HS, and for college, and noted how these practices correlated with the audience (teacher) expectations, the purpose for your writing (for the grade, to complete the assignment) and the form.

below is a sampling of notes from this discussion:

HS
step-by-step
teacher centered (for the grade)
follow teacher's directions (formulaic)
very conscious of what the teacher expected

stream of consciousness
one-shot through
teacher centered

notes=> cheat sheet
invent conclusion
aural/participation (rather than from written directions)
write question

College
longer, fewere sources=> more original thought
brainstorm
find idea
switch writing around (revision)
more organic rather than formulaic

We used these descriptions as a way to notice some general changes as students moved from HS to college:  students took more ownership of their writing, meaning they wrote more for themselves than for the teacher; they were writing for a different, often more demanding audience, and they were writing in new (unfamiliar sometimes) genres => these changes in audience, purpose + form for the writing caused students to spend more time on finding their meanings (because they were their meanings), to spend more time revising.  What the particular changes are will be different for different writers, but in general, as the demands and contexts for writing change, so does the process.

We didn't get a chance to go through the last exercise I had planned for today, which was to do some naming (categorizing) of what is going on in the processes you have been describing in the writing posted to your process page.  Below I have posted a list of moves to make to do some of that categorizing.  You will work through some version of this process in class, next week, both working on your own writing, and working in groups.

Identifying some categories for your process essay
Look at what you have written about the different parts of your writing process: invention, drafting, revising, editing.
Pay attention both to the content of what you have written + the feeling.
As we did with the writing you did for the prompts about how your writing has changed, list some words to characterize your writing for each part of the process

Are there any words, ideas, feelings that come up over and over in your writing about any part of the writing process, or in your writing about the writing process as a whole?
What are the most "important" words to characterize what you do in each part of the process?

Then, make some notes about what you did and how the audience, purpose and genre (form) of the writing influenced the kind of writing you did for each part of the process.

For next class:
Read: Elbow, Chapter 3
Write: any additional descriptions of writing process you will need for your process essay


What should be posted for the process page so far:
1.28 writing for the 3 questions on the Literacy narrative (invention) Title the post: 1.28Name_Technologies
2.11 writing on process for drafting the literacy narrative
2. 18 observations about your writing process (the kind of reflective observations we worked on in class last week - but for writing projects/processes other than the literacy narrative
2. 25 writing on process for revising literacy narrative
2.25 writing on how writing process is changing