Reading Response 6

Getting Ready to Read

To write I need to be in a very quiet place.  I find any background conversation to be very distracting.  I also need to be well rested.  Other than these, I don't have any writing rituals.

Summary
In her article 'Decisions and Revisions' Carol Berkenhotter explains a detailed naturalistic study she did trying to figure out how scholars go about writing academic articles.  In this study she has Donald Murray record himself as he worked on three different academic articles in his own workplace.  She shows that in order to work some people must be in specific environments without time restrictions, which is why most studies about how scholars write are not effective.

Synthesis
This article relates to Sarah Allen's article 'The Inspired Writer vs. the Real Writer' because both articles address how people get ideas to write.  Allen calls herself and 'inspired writer' because writing comes naturally to her, but she has to struggle against herself to not just write what comes to her but to also revise and add to it.

Personal Response
I felt that this article was interesting on the grounds that Berkenkotter used a method to conduct research that interrupted Murray's writing process as little as possible.  The reading itself was dry and informative as are most of the articles that we have read.

Questions for Discussion and Journaling

1  Murray's writing processes are much more elaborate than mine.  In the past I have spent little time planning, I just write.  It has worked in the past but I will have to change it for college classes.  After I write I go back through my paper and revise it, correcting errors and tweaking sentences and paragraphs to sound better.  I do not write down what I think of my work and change it later as Murray does, I just change it.

2.  Berkenkotter concluded that Murray moves between planning, drafting, editing and revision.  She was surprised that he only spent between 0% and 3%  of his time on each article revising.  It seemed to her that revising would take more time than that.

Applying and Exploring Ideas

1.  I spend most of my time actually writing and thinking of what to say next.  I write in a linear path, starting at the beginning and thinking of the best thing to say next that will get me a good grade.  After I am done writing I go over the paper and correct any errors and edit my sentences to sound better.  I have a low level of writing experience, just high school English class.  This relates to how I spend my time writing because if I knew more about writing I might use a more sophisticated writing method.

Meta Moment

From these readings I have learned the importance of planning while writing.  Murray spend more time on the planning step than any other step.