The Writer Must Read Effectively By David Murray Analysis

Furthermore, according to Duncan Carter’s article, Five Myths About Writing, “Years of well-intentioned English teachers have responded to students’ first drafts as if they were supposed to have been perfect. Combined with a pedagogy which suggests that revision is a form of punishment, it is not hard to see where students get the idea that good writers don’t have to revise” (Carter, 82). Growing up, high school teachers make it seem as if revising and editing your paper is the worst thing ever. Any student who worked long and hard on their assignment and turned it in to get revised, would hate to receive a paper back with nothing but red marks and errors written all over them. This initially gave people the mindset of forgetting about editing their work if all it did was tear them down and point out their mistakes.

In Anne Lamott’s excerpt “Shitty First Drafts,” Lamott exhibits her own professional experience writing food reviews for California magazine while giving her audience a peek of her “shitty” drafting process. Lamott’s title is unique and not something you would expect to be reading in a college course. Nevertheless, this piece is effective in comforting the audience of students when it comes to writing drafts. Initially when I read the title I was uncertain what the content would be. However, after reading the first paragraph I understood the purpose behind “Shitty First Drafts”. Lamott’s purpose was to comfort her audience and does so almost immediately by saying “all good writers write shitty first drafts.” This statement alone sets a relaxed

( Chapter 3) Naked in the warm June sunshine, six or seven hundred little boys and girls were running with shrill yells over the lawns, or playing ball games, or squatting silently in twos and threes among the flowering shrubs. The roses were in bloom, two nightingales soliloquized in the boskage, a cuckoo was just going out of tune among the lime trees.The air was drowsy with the murmur of bees and helicopters (Huxley 30).

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 her article “Shitty First drafts”, Anne Lamott presents her opinion that every writer and author, no matter how good they are, are bound to produce shitty first drafts that eventually improve in later drafts. Lamott stated that shitty first drafts turn out to be “terrific third drafts” with continuous revisions and improvements. Her main argument in the article was in favor of writing shitty first drafts based on her personal experiences and observations.

In ‘’Shitty First Drafts,’’ by Anne Lamott argues that in order to create ‘’ terrific third draft’’ you must first start out with a ‘’shitty first draft’’. She believes that every good writers, should write shitty first drafts, because the writer will produce better second drafts and ‘’terrific third drafts.’’ I completely agree with Lamott, because the first draft will never be flawless, and therefore from the moment I start writing an essay I fairly pour everything out, all of thoughts and ideas into the first draft, which becomes my ‘’shitty first draft’’. In my first English class in college, I was explained it’s beneficial to write a ‘’shitty first draft’’, since the first draft is like an exercise. Thought out this course I continued using Lamott idea of writing a first shitty draft. Thus whenever I created my first draft I only wrote my views and indications and it was always atrocious, although the process I took was precisely helpful in creating final draft, for instances I would gather all the information plus during the teachers ' conference I would take all of the errors the teacher exposed put into inconsideration. I always wrote a first shitty draft my final draft would be strictly acceptable. Nevertheless it is paramount to create a first shitty draft, because occasionally the mind goes blank and other times the mind is full of the ideas and beliefs, and since it’s the first draft later on add more knowledgeable ideas to the final essay.

He also states that it is important to track the revision changes made throughout the evolution of the draft. The act of tracking can show how much you have changed due to revision and can give you a clearer view of how the thought process changed (445-447, 457). Harris’s purpose through making these arguments about the lack of proper revision and giving advice on how to revise at a mature level are to help writers rewrite instead of merely editing and making small, localized changes.

In Kevin Clarke’s essay from Speaking of Reading, the greatest obstruction faced by Clarke in learning to read was his own negative mindset and way of looking at himself as a reader. When Clarke was young and had just commenced reading it was evident that he had struggles and even says himself “I was too afraid I wouldn't be able to understand another book” (4). Clarke saying this illustrates that he created his own negative way of thinking by fearing failure and not understanding something which is a major obstacle for him in learning to read. In addition to this, Clarke feels as if he doesn’t have what it takes to be a superior reader and goes on to say “I assumed I was wrong...I don’t trust myself to read it right”

Reading the two articles, Anne Lamott’s “Shitty First Drafts” and Donald M. Murray’s “Write Before Writing” numerous times made me realize a connection with their writing process that I can relate to. Lamott believes that every good writer, or every writer should write shitty first drafts because the writer will produce better second drafts. In her article, she gives examples of her writing struggles and gives her point of view of the writing process. In order to have a good piece of writing, one must write all of their ideas onto paper. Murray’s article gives some instructions on how to create and start a better writing. He expressed that writers should give time to what they’re going to write about, so that they can understand and make it easy on themselves. After reading the articles, I realized some of the complications I suffer within my writing process, but one strategy that I found helpful is Lamott’s drafting development strategies.

In Nancy Sommers’ article, “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers”, she addresses how to different groups, students and experienced writers, go about revising their paper. Sommers method of taking the results of her experience could have been much more effective if she would have added details about certain thing. How did the group’s final papers turn out? Where there significant difference in the final papers, and if so what were they. Did both group turn up with nicely written papers? These questions would have helped to understand the importance of revision toward the creation of the paper, then just the revision stage itself. Sommers mention of how most students repeat themselves in their writings by just

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.

In “How to Read Literature Like a Professor”, chapter 18, Foster speaks on the topic of rebirth and renewal. He says that when a character's body is submerged into a body of water there is a symbolic meaning behind it. If the character arises from the watery depths ,then there has been some form of transformation whether it be internal or external. This is actually one of my favorite motifs to speak on, or think about. It shows the change and development of a character, how they grow, and their thought process has changed. This stage of rebirth in a literary work is the background, or building blocks, to the character's new persona/attitude.

In the novel How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster discloses to the readers the significance of the communion of food, which can be applied to the journey Pi experiences in the novel Life of Pi. Foster manages to portray the significance of the communion of food by explaining that “whenever people eat or drink together, it’s communion” (Foster 8). Communion can not only be religious, but it can also be an act of understanding a character’s relationship with other characters.

Typically, when most people think about the writing process they think of terms such as a ‘thesis statement,’ developing an outline, body paragraphs, conclusion; it’s imperative to view writing this way. We have only been taught THIS way of writing almost directly after we learned how to spell words—you decide what to write about, usually specified in the thesis statement, then you write a series of paragraphs entailing how you came to this conclusion. Finally, you conclude your paper by restating exactly what it was you spent an entire essay writing about. And most people will go their entire lives believing that is the formula for an effective, well thought-out work of literature. But how often do we go back and read through our writing and completely resent how amateur and forced it sounds? This is usually a direct result of a lack of revision within a work. Defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “a change or a set of changes that corrects or improves something” and “a new version of something that has been corrected or changed,” Revision is not a common word we think of when writing—this raises a serious question: how should you revise? In response to this to this, research was conducted to find a general view as to the significance of revision within various individual’s writing processes. These results, along with research from several academic articles provide a clear description as to where revision could be

Paul Roberts states, “When students complete a first draft, they consider the job of writing done ¬¬– and their teachers too often agree. When professional writers complete a first draft, they usually feel that they are at the start of the writing process.” Sadly, I believe the concept of writing a first draft, then immediately writing a final draft, has been taught from elementary to high school (maybe even college). It never occurred to me to work on several drafts before handing in a final draft. In fact, we have learned this semester that there should be four stages in the writing process before submitting a final draft: prewriting, writing, rewriting, and editing. So many times I have clumped all the stages into one stage when writing a paper. I began to notice that numerous sections of my paper needed to be rewritten – even after it was graded. Again, Paul Roberts says, “When does this process end? Most writers agree with the great Russian writer Tolstoy, who said, ‘I scarcely ever reread my published writings, if by chance I come across a page, it always strikes me: all this must be rewritten; this is how I should have written it.” I plan to utilize this writing tool by rewriting all my papers in future classes rather than clumping all writing stages into one