My writing process has always felt chaotic and messy. For a while I let my educators lay out my expectations for me. As a young writer, I clutched onto examples and outlines of essay assignments like a lifeline in my classes, never knowing where to jump off from to start my own ideas. I rarely understood that I could branch off of the cookie-cutter, 5 paragraph essay format. Toward the end of high school, however, I caught on to the idea that writing was more about the statement that I had to prove than forcing the necessary sentences into their assigned seats.
It was only when I began writing independently (poems, journals, etc.) that I finally found the strategies that worked for my brain. I would start by creating a solid conceptualization of what I was trying to prove and then move on to dumping every single piece of information in my brain onto a page. Flower and Hayes discuss the former strategy in their text Cognitive Process Theory of Writing where they assert that “people only solve the problems they define for themselves. If a writer's representation of her rhetorical problem is inaccurate or simply underdeveloped, then she is unlikely to "solve" or attend to the missing aspects of the problem,” (Flower and Hayes 369). By defining my claim preemptively and as succinctly as possible, I can begin to write down random ideas and word vomit to build an outline of a paper. Without this solid starting point, I find that I can confidently create work with little merit that is infused with my writing voice but doesn’t prove much.
By info-dumping, I can gather all of my ideas and evidence points together and then edit and further digest the paper from solid ground. As Vicki Spanel points out in The 9 Rights of Every Writer, “most days I will write a lot of words I’ll end up simply throwing away. That’s the way writing works. You need to create a lot of garbage to get at the heart of it—the real message, the thing you want most to say, the voice that is really you” (Spandel 65). This is also how digital composition affects me most as a writer. By inhibiting a platform for editing, reformatting, and multi-media development of a single idea, the recursive nature of digital composition creates a multidimensional learning experience.
I also talked about word vomit in my own blog. Information dumps are always how I get started. I think many of us in this class can also relate to your first paragraph, we really are sold the idea of 'cookie cutter writing' which harms our creativity. Spandel's piece really shows how writing garbage at first and being imperfect is perfectly okay, and I like the quote that you added from that piece.
ReplyDeleteThis is Annabelle...
DeleteGreta- I enjoyed working with you in the last class and I felt so honored to see your notebook/journal creation. It is truly a piece of art/ writing and I think your creative way of thinking- the writing that flows on those pages are going to inspire students to find their own ways to write. I am excited for you to get into a classroom. I too "word vomit" on paper just to dump the ideas flowing in my brain to a solid piece of paper. I will later make sense out of that, but I need to expel them first, if that makes sense. :)
ReplyDeleteHi Greta! Word vomit is great and that is how I tend to start all of my writing. I feel like it's because I have so many thoughts coming at me, that I just need to get them down before more thoughts consume me, I'm sure you probably feel something similar. I also love that you keep a journal with you, always. I will say I've seen you doodling and have had the chance to glance at it and it's always something cool and awesome. I keep a journal too, mainly with just writing, but it's so theraputic. Great post! ◡̈
ReplyDeleteGreta, you make beautiful connections to the readings when describing your own writing process. Your image selections also amplify your unique engagement with the many decisions we make as writers.
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