Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [19]
Writing is a recursive, not a linear process. Generation and presentation require different kinds of writing and thinking activities, though in practice these phases overlap. Writers do not simply finish a rough draft, then revise it, and then edit it in the tidy three-stage process commonly taught in school. They might, for example, make several different starts at the same writing task, then revise it, then learn from these revisions that they need to do more drafting, and so on.
Your goal is to generate enough material to locate your best options. Even in disciplines that do not encourage forms of exploratory writing (such as psychology and the natural sciences), because they concentrate instead on the forms of finished products, you can make use of your own informal writing, dwelling longer in the process, so as to learn how to arrive at more thoughtful products.
To a significant extent, the final draft re-creates for the reader the writer’s experience of arriving at his or her key ideas. Good analytical writing, at whatever stage, has an exploratory feel. It shares its discovery process with the reader. This is true, by the way, even in such tightly predetermined forms as that of the scientific lab report. The report format actually requires the writer to recreate the steps that took him or her to conclusions.
Tips for Managing the Writing Process
Start anywhere that gets you going. The writing process is nonlinear. Very few writers simply begin at the beginning and write straight through to the end. Sometimes your best bet is to write individual paragraphs and then arrange them later.
Allow yourself to write a crummy first draft if that is how you work best. Get something on paper before worrying about what others might think of it. A writer’s assumptions about his or her audience can help to generate writing but can also create writer’s block. When you get stuck or frustrated, don’t worry—just keep writing.
If you draft on a computer, try not to hit delete prematurely. Instead, rename each of your drafts. Hang on to false starts; they may help you later.
Postpone anxiety about grammar and spelling and style. You can revise and correct your draft once you have given yourself the opportunity to discover what you want to say.
Know that what works for one writer might not work for another. There is no one right way to conduct the writing process. Some writers need to outline; other writers need to write first and then might use outlining later to figure out what is going on in their drafts. Some writers absolutely must write an introduction before they can move forward. Others need to jump in elsewhere and write the introduction last. Experiment! Devote some time to finding out what works for you.
Put your unconscious on the job. You can’t always write through an act of will. Sometimes, when the words aren’t coming, it helps to go do something else—take a shower, go for a walk. Often you will find that a part of your brain has remained on the job. We call this resource in the writing process the back-burner—the place where things keep quietly stewing while you are thinking about something else. If you are really stuck, take some notes right before bedtime and write as soon as you wake in the morning.
HOW TO THINK ABOUT GRAMMAR AND STYLE (BEYOND ERROR-CATCHING)
A mantra of the book is that a sentence is the shape that thought takes. The goal of the book’s treatment of grammar and style is to get you to refocus your attention from anxiety about error-detection to particular interest in the structures of sentences.
Many people are unduly anxious about grammar—so much so that they have trouble writing. Error-avoidance is important in the final stages of drafting, but it is also a very limited and limiting perspective on sentences. Instead, look at sentences in terms of logic and rhetoric. Ask yourself, “So what that the sentence is constructed in the way that it is? How does this shape relate to the way of thinking that the sentence contains?”
You need at least a minimal amount of