Summary Of Donald Murray The Maker's Eye

Murray (1917-2006) was a scholar, journalist, and author among many other things. Murray wrote the essay “The Maker’s Eye: Revising your own Manuscript”, which was published in a magazine called The Writer. “The Maker’s Eye” explains why it is beneficial to revise no matter if you are a beginner or experienced. “As a word is changed, cut, or added, as a construction is rearranged, all the words used before that moment and all those that follow that moment must be considered and reconsidered.” This means when you changed any word in your writing that is the time to look at previously written words, but also consider the new words you are

In ” Decisions and Revisions: The Planning Strategies of a Publishing Writer,” Carol Berkenkotter describes a “lab” that she performed on Donald M. Murray to better understand how professional writer’s revise their work; in “Response of a Laboratory Rat–or, Being Protocoled,” Murray discusses not only how he felt about being a “lab rat”, but also what he took away from the experience.

This chapter of the textbook by E. Shelley Reid’s Ten Ways To Think About Writing: Metaphoric Musings for College Writing addresses writing students. Reid uses expository and descriptive types of writing in her text. She describes and explains about the ten different important things when it comes to writing. One example in her chapter is where she explains how to write by the rules, describes the steps on how to be a successful writer and why some people struggle with writing essays or paragraphs sometimes. The writer quoted, “Write about what you know about so that you can show not just tell in order to adapt to your audience’s needs and accomplish your goals. Unless you do a good job showing what you mean, your audience will not understand your message.” (4) She also stated in one of her steps that sometimes the audience or readers of an essay or writing cannot exactly understand what the writer is trying to tell them. She tells her audience to

Stephen King, in his chapter titled “Toolbox” in On Writing, aims to convince the struggling writer that taking simple steps to organize a metaphorical box of writing tools will improve their writing. He does so through the use of organization, substance, and style and by appealing to his audience with logical examples to support his claims. “Toolbox” is, in summary, a crash course given by King on writing improvement. He depicts the fundamentals of good writing as levels of a toolbox then demonstrates how and when each writing tool should be used (King 106-107). The chapter is a veritable response to the question, “How can I improve my writing?” which one can imagine King is routinely asked as a world-renowned author. He already enjoyed an immensely successful writing career when Hodder published On Writing in 2012, so King wrote the chapter “Toolbox” as literary advice to fellow writers by drawing from his own success (“Stephen King”).

From the Journal of higher education, many lessons can be learned. One lesson being, Ms. Gussow emphasizes the importance of analyzing, assessing and reconstructing. For example, Ms. Gussow has her students create a drawing of a pea pod from memory. When they finish she brings in a real pea pod, by then the students recognize missed details. The lesson is to realize the difference from memory to reality. The students then notice that all pea pods are unlike one another. By this example, it shows the importance of observing more of the world around them. This illustration is similar to the excerpt on writing drafts. When beginning an essay some people often research and have one topic in mind. As they continue writing, more thoughts accumulate. By then you are writing about something you did not imagine when you began. Despite the previous argument, there are many reasons to prove such discipline can help.

Everyone knows what writing is to one extent or another, but we all have different definitions of how it should be done and varying degrees of seriousness about the art. We all have a process of writing, but each is unique to ourselves and our own experiences. Annie Dillard and Stephen King are two well known authors who have published many pieces, two of which describe how they view the writing process and let their readers get a peek of what goes on through their minds when they write. These two pieces are Dillard’s The Writing Life and King’s “What Writing Is.”

The Maker’s Eye written by Donald Murray is intended for any writer out there and people who want to improve their writing. He wrote the maker's eye to instruct writers on four of the five points of revision and editing. He tells his readers that the difference in attitude is the difference between amateur and professional. People must accept the criticism of others and be suspicious of that same criticism. Also if they must accept the appreciation of other people then they should be even more suspicious of their writing. Donald Murray explains that most writers

In literary education, from childhood to maturity, individuals are taught how to write not to improve themselves as critical thinkers, but to fulfill the requirements given to them in a prompt. Whether to analyze or argue, this form of writing has led to a cease of literary improvement in students today, making many question the effectiveness of writing classes. Mike Bunns, in his article “To Read like a Writer”, explores this topic and stresses the necessity for young readers to critically examine the author’s choices in order to improve their own pieces of work. Bunns effectively argues to his audience of college students that improved comprehension comes from focusing on the rhetorical choices authors decide to make in their compositions by tying personal narratives with repetitive questioning throughout his article.

negative effect on the reader. Change writing is the type of writing where the writer,

In chapter 3 of Everyone’s an Author, the main purpose is to discuss the writing process and its components. The chapter emphasizes the idea that practice makes perfect and it may take time and patience to find the writing process that works well for you. In order to find a writing process that leads to you working the most efficiently, one must approach their writing and take note of the habits they make, and analyze whether or not they work well.

Lamott compares the process of writing with the painful process of pulling the teeth. She believes that in order to produce a high quality writing, the author must first put together all their ideas and thoughts in form of the “child draft”. This draft determines the flow and dimension

Harris argues that revision is overlooked and undervalued because, as readers, we see texts in their final form and do not see the “hesitations, repetition, digressions…and flat-out mistakes of earlier drafts” (442). He then supports this idea when he demonstrates in a draft, by a student named Abhijit Mehta, the difference between editing and revising. He comments, “at the mundane level, he

Based on his argument using a piece of story from his past, the writer conceptually supported his explanatory point of views on how skills can be developed with a passion of understanding the writer’s intention. I believe that the writer of this article addressed fundamental thoughts that should be useful in the process of reading as a writer, and on how to become a better writer.

In writing, as in other kinds of production, the process directly affects the quality of the product. If we prepare a meal quickly, assembling poor ingredients without much thought or attention, we aren’t likely to end up with a tasty dish. The best chefs, like the best writers, refine their methods and think carefully about what they are doing, with close attention to detail to

With the new reader/writer roles also comes a change in the idea of what literature actually represents. Bolters states that literature is traditionally viewed as merely a reflection of the author’s world. The new participatory role of the reader therefore changes what the reading represents because the written work becomes its own independent world, constantly moving and changing depending on what path the reader wants to take (Bolter 169).