The Maker's Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts

By examining the ideas in the essays Freewriting by Peter Elbow and The Makers Eye: Revising your own manuscripts by Donald Murray. One can gain a better understanding of the process of turning a piece of writing from an inspiration into a craft. By examining the elements lined out in each essay can be beneficial in creating a piece of writing that is beyond a college or student level. Elbows essay lines out the importance of a strong prewriting regimen. That editing too early can ruin writing. He believes that by using the method of free writing, it can inspire ideas that may be limited when worrying about grammar. While Murray emphasizes the necessity to create many drafts to form writing into its full potential. Saying each draft is an opportunity to discover what the author has to say and they the best way to say it. By transforming writing into its maximum potential it goes from being an idea an inspiration a masterpiece.

In the article “The Maker’s Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts” by Donald M. Murray, it talks about how writers and authors see and revise their own work. After reading this I saw how time and discipline play a big role in this task. Murray quotes famous writers, one being Ray Bradbury, the author of the novel Fahrenheit 451. Murray explains his technique on how he revised his work, along with many other ways that authors edit their writing.

According to Donald M. Murray, revising a work of writing is an essential procedure a writer goes through. As many other professional writers have mentioned, “Writing is rewriting,” they see each draft as an opportunity to rebuild their work since there’s never a feeling of satisfaction. In his essay, Murray incorporates the experiences of authors Peter F. Drucker, Ray Bradbury, John Ciardi, Eleanor Estes, and others to make an argument on how important the revising and editing process are when writing for an audience. Murray divides his essay into three main sections which are becoming the enemy of our first draft, using the seven elements of writing such as the audience and information, and lastly finding the potential and alternatives of

As a recent high school graduate I may seem to have many more weaknesses than strengths. But, when brainstorming for ideas to write about I noticed that I had many more strengths than weaknesses, the complete opposite. My strengths allow me to stand out and allow my audience to experience my writing in a positive way. I am very persuasive and can demonstrate to others the way I believe and how I feel about a topic so they can recognize the way I view a certain topic. By being persuasive it is important to show ones opinions and

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

Within the past eight weeks, I have realized my strengths and weaknesses within the writing process. I have realized that I do not utilize the first step within the writing process of prewriting. However, for the drafting, revising, and polishing steps of the writing process, I am very familiar and use additional resources to strengthen the writing assignment. I create multiple drafts, which includes revising and polishing in each step. Therefore, I use all three of these steps in multiple drafts as I reach the final product for

A person's strength was always his weakness. When it comes to reading and writing, I have many strengths and weaknesses. My past writing and reading experiences have made me into the writer/reader that I today. Strengths help me excel in my read/write, but the weaknesses do bring me in a stump at times. When writing an essay, you can have a very high vocabulary, but not have the best of grammar. The good thing about weaknesses is that they can be worked on to be made into a strength. Many people achieve this by setting goals and making the new one harder and harder. Without strengths or weaknesses or even goals, how would people learn from their mistakes, becoming better at what they're not or achieve their aims.

Firstly, when it comes to my strengths in writing, I do not believe I carry many. Of the few I possess, my word selection is a constant advantage for me. I try not to settle for undereducated vocabulary. I see this as taking the easy way out and I do not believe I learn from this. Another one of my strengths when it comes to writing is my adequate spelling. Accurate spelling is strongly in my nature. When I am reading I can sense when a word is spelled incorrectly. My final strength in writing is organization. I believe my work is clear to follow. This is important so I can get my message across to my reader. Although I am solid in these aspects of my writing, they

My writing strengths include grammar and mechanics and thought out introductions. In my writings, I proofread and edit and revise without fail before turning in an essay. Doing this results in the fixing of grammatical and mechanical errors.

I think self-reflection, or a careful cogitation of one’s personal work, is very important. It will help me think about my strengths and weaknesses in my writing skills and learning process, so that I can improve my weaknesses in the future and become a better writer. I believe, I have many strengths and many weaknesses that can be seen transparently through my drafts, revisions, and final essays, or writings, this semester. My overall strength includes the ability to pick out good examples from articles and the ability to construct good development of my body paragraphs after my revisions. On the other hand, my overall weakness includes having some unclear explanation of thoughts, unclear topic sentences, confusing thesis statements, having undefined terms, difficulties transitioning from one idea to another. I have learned that to have a good essay, I must revise my papers more than once because there are always flaws that can be fixed or improved. My writing process has evolved from having difficulties writing down or explaining my thought process to being able to explain and clarify examples to help support my thesis statement.

The paper I wrote had both strength and weaknesses. The strengths were, I did a good job at finding thing to compare and contrast, but

This is the first time I have written an essay with some analysis of author’s craft. This unit helped me realized that I have not been analyzing enough (and well enough) in the past. I had usually only written 2-3 sentences, just explaining the quote. I never really went into depth, which made my supports weak. I feel my analyzing skills have improved while writing this essay as I have learned what a strong analysis looks like. A strong analysis is clear, detailed, and well supported. A thing I noticed about myself is that I constantly go off track while analyzing, so while writing my essay, I tried to stay focused. When finding my evidence, I needed to make sure they were the best to support my thesis/claim. I went in trying to find quotes

During the semester, I learned to focus on my strengths and work on my weaknesses. I could use my organization, paragraph structure, and transition skills to keep high quality writing. This will be helpful to assure an above average grade when I take English 102 during the summer. On the other hand, although students often try to avoid their weaknesses, I see them as useful. Knowing my weaknesses gives me the opportunity to work on them until they become strengths. For example, as I mentioned before, organization is presently my biggest strength. However, at the beginning of the course, it wasn’t. I had to practice and work on it until it became natural and

Writing is a skill that takes time to develop. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is very important. Being aware of your strengths can help you stand out, and your weaknesses show you areas where improvement is needed. Like everybody I have weaknesses as well as strengths, and being conscious of them helped me improve my writing skills.

Writing is not just as simple as putting words down on a document or a piece of paper, it is a process. Within this intricate process are steps that involve more than just writing, such as critical thinking, planning, and editing. Using these steps has not only helped me when planning an essay but also when composing one. Throughout this course, I have managed to improve many skills and gain a lot of strengths, but I still possess some weaknesses. Overall, I believe my strengths have definitely outgrown these weaknesses and have led to a better, more high-quality writing process which leads to improved essays.