ENGL 505B

Sommer’s discussion of the revision strategies of experienced writers resonated with me. I’m one of those people who typically plan and think things through extensively before I start my composition, and then when I write it’s all done in a single draft. I think over ideas, cross some out, make connections, and then diagram the idea structure of the whole essay. After I’ve thought it all through it’s just a matter of putting those ideas into the right words. My revisions are just the tweaking of sentences. While this usually works well for me, I came on a stumbling block last night when I was writing up my journal for my Second Language Writing class. I had all the ideas planned out, with the whole essay diagrammed, but once I got to the end I realized that the final section didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the essay.

This frustrated the hell out of me. Part of the problem I think was that I wrote it all up hastily, and started writing the journal the same day. Usually I set aside my notes and diagrams and go back to them every few days, adding ideas, noting inconsistencies, and making new diagrams. My revision process is all in the pre-writing stage. I basically skipped this revision process for the journal, and just wrote it up. But I think I’m way too tied to my diagram and outline. I’ve understood the idea of writing as a discovery process, but my discovery process has all been in pre-writing. I like the comments from the experienced writers, where they characterize writing as getting the ideas down and finding the structure in what is written. One writers says, “My first draft is usually very scattered. In rewriting, I find the line of argument.” This is the complete opposite of how I approached writing. I’m still not quite comfortable with the idea of “finding your argument” as you write. But I can see how it could have helped with last night’s journal. Even though I thought I understood the argument, it didn’t quite play out as I thought it would. It didn’t tie together in the end. But because I had done so much planning and diagramming beforehand, it was difficult for me to accept this idea. I plan to experiment more with this approach of figuring out what I want to say as I’m writing. I’ll have to start practicing what I preach to my students.