Process: The Product of Writing

Malea Powell’s focus on rhetoric in her classes has prompted me to think about how I would teach, and to what end. After watching Take 20, I believe that the process of writing begins long before the physical writing of a draft. The first step is teaching students to follow and then create a logical argument, to come up with counter-arguments, to research, to use evidence effectively to prove a point. A student can learn the above skills through writing, but there are also other options.

In Take 20, one of the teachers mentioned having students write in class to practice. I would like to take this a step further: have students write in class, but also edit their own work, from a previous week, during class. Put your own writing up on the screen, and walk your students through the editing process. How do you look at your own work? Put up other writing samples. Ask for examples of counter-arguments within the text, or – perhaps more importantly – where the author should have added a counter-argument. Where is the author missing evidence, or using evidence ineffectively? Then, how can the author fix these problems?

I think the following quotes from Take 20 would be extremely useful in helping students consider writing as an ongoing process rather than a final product: “Nobody’s writing is ever finished, just due.” I’ll paraphrase the other quote: you can’t do writing wrong, because, like making a clay pot, you can always do it again; you just have to make sure you have enough clay. Also, straying away from Take 20, Natalie Goldberg (author of Writing Down the Bones) comes to mind: If you want to write, write. Despite my emphasis on editing, students have to practice writing to get any better. (Side note: If I was in the Take 20 video and had to pick a book for writing, I’d go with Writing Down the Bones. It’s for creative writers, but has some great quotes about writing in general.)

Emphasize reading as part of the process of writing. The point of considering writing as a “process” is to improve the product, right? Exposure to correct use of ideas, language, concepts, and arguments is one of the most effective ways to learn the skills yourself. When Dr. Rice passes around his current personal reading choices, that’s what he’s doing – he’s exposing us to new ideas, new books we might never have bothered to look at before. Do that with your own students. Have a student pick a book they liked and bring it to class, pass it around. Don’t just limit discussion to books – get students interested in informative TV shows, podcasts, NPR, a lecture series on campus. The point is exposure to good language, good rhetoric, and well-articulated ideas, and this happens in places other than books. We’re not just teaching students to write logically and clearly; we’re teaching them to be better readers of people, of speeches, and of written work. I want students to leave a class able to write well, but also able to identify writing which is purposefully manipulative, illogical, unclear, or vague -- and to know to take those kinds of writing with a grain of salt.

Once again, a specific project comes to my mind: have students rewrite an unclear news brief, bring articles into class that are unclear or have faulty logic. Have students complie a list of writing they might do for their future careers: memo, resume, proposal, grant, article, letter; then, a list of the writing they need to learn for college: academic papers, essays, scholarship applications.

Workplace writing has a different form than academic writing, to be sure, but all writing shares a similar thought process: idea, edit, research, evidence, follow-through with an idea, determine counterarguments, clarify, and simplify. This is true of all writing. Even creative writing. Even memos. The amount of time, the depth of thought, the audience, the purpose may change; but the process, the way of thinking, does not. Teach the process, and students will gather skills which will apply not only across the disciplines, but beyond academia, into each student's work, social and personal life.