Marking Out: "I don't use the word rewriting because I only write one draft and the changes that I make are made on top of the draft. The changes that I make are usually just marking out words and putting dif- ferent ones in."
Super interesting to think about. Made me consider, "what do I call revising?" I think the word I most commonly use is editing but really just because nowadays we use our computer to type so instead of scratching something out, we click edit on the document.
What is impossible in speech is revision: like the example Barthes gives, revi- sion in speech is an afterthought.
I feel like this is something that everyone knows, but no one thinks about. Personally, reading that I was like "yes absolutely", but the first thing that popped into my mind after thinking about it was all of the times I didn't think before I spoke and it's crazy how much not being cautious with your words can effect you.
Or it might be that your paragraph is moving on to a new idea that needs to be sorted out.
Often when I feel a paragraph slipping away from me, getting lost in another idea, I get rid of the part of the paragraph that dove into another topic, when instead I should probably take a step back and consider if I should actually just split that paragraph into two.
it's important that your topic sentence isn't too ambitious.
I like this idea of not trying to tackle too much in one paragraph and Ill definitely be trying to keep this is mind when writing.
A good paragraph isn't bloated with irrelevant evidence or redundant sentences. Nor is it a scrawny thing, begging to be fed. It's strong and buffed. You know that it's been worked on.
I hate feeling that my writing is redundant and bloated but whenever I get that feeling with a paragraph, I know that feeling is correct.
. If you outline a paper too early in the writing process, you risk missing these connections. You line up your argument -A. B. C. -without fully understanding why. Sketching your argument helps you to see, for example, that points A and C really overlap and need to be thought through more carefully.
I definitely run into this problem more than I should. I often start right away by outlining my paper and I will miss certain opportunities to make more insightful connections within my writing because I look at and figure out the structure of my paper too early on. This reminds me of the idea of picking a typeface before actually writing, therefore assigning an idea to something that has yet to be fully formed.
Get specific
I try my best to include as much detail as I can as to why I would change something, sometimes even giving an example of what I would change it into, just to get my paper back and have it be marked by vague one word answers. In general, I would agree with the the statement that short and sweet isn't the best Idea in most cases.
You're there to play back to the writer how you read the paper: what you got from it; what you found interest-ing; where you were confused; where you wanted more.
Yes. I like this because often times when I show a draft to a peer I just get corrections about grammar or ways to change my wording for it to flow better, when in reality im more concerned with whether or not they understood and agreed with the points I was making. I can usually spot all the mistakes in my grammar after a few reads but checking if my reasoning is understandable is on the top of my to do list.
Don't praise anything really, but no need to get harsh or cut throat either. Get in and get out. You're okay, I'm okay. Everybody's happy. What's the problem?
I personally think this is a dangerous mindset, because its hard to get better when only half of your mistakes are presented to you, or when you receive a dialed back reaction to a major issue. Although there is a difference between constructive and rude, I would love to hear someone's true response over a dumbed down version of what they really thought.
In high school, Ruth was told and told again that a good essay always grabs a reader's attention immediately. Until you can make your essay do that, her teachers and textbooks putatively declaimed, there is no need to go on.
This is something I personally always struggled with because I would often get stuck on trying to start my writing with something attention grabbing and when I failed to do so, I would basically just give up on writing and decide to come back another day.
the five students who experienced blocking were all operating either with writing rules or with planning strategies that impeded rather than enhanced the com- posing process. The five students who were not hampered by writer's block also utilized rules, but they were less rigid ones, and thus more appropriate to a complex process like writing. Also, the plans these non-blockers brought to the writing process were more functional, more flexible, more open to information from the outside.
Basically sounds like 5 of the students read shitty first drafts and the other 5 didnt
This blocking usually resulted in rushed, often late papers and resultant grades that did not truly reflect these students' writing ability. And then, of course, there were other less measurable but probably more serious results: a grow- ing distrust of their abilities and an aversion toward the composing process itself.
This made me consider that a fair amount of procrastination when it comes to writing may just be a learned fear of writers block. I find that I often put essays off till the last moment because any attempt at a reasonable time results in me just blankly staring at the page. Where as on a hot deadline, I am forced to just start writing and implement ideas from SFD.
Very few writers really know what they are doing until they've done it.
I feel like this can be applied to almost anything a successful person achieves. Very few people reach their goal exactly the way they planned to, sometimes their goal shifts completely along the way. The important part was simply that they started their journey.
that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few times to get all the cricks out, and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter. But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated.
Trying to break this mindset when it comes to any task or obstacle has been really beneficial for me, as ive started to just begin attacking a problem at hand instead of spending so much time thinking about how im going to approach it. We lose so much of ourselves to overthinking and situational anxiety that we sometimes forget what we were trying to do in the first place.