Reading Response: Berkenkotter & Murray

Berkenkotter & Murray:

Summary:

Carol Berkenkotter’s “Decisions and Revisions: The Planning Strategies of a Publishing Writer,” and Donad M. Murray’s “Response of a Laboratory Rat—or, Being Protocoled,” seek to explore the writing strategies of an author in a non-laboratory  environment. Although these pieces read together may help a young writer developing their own strategies, this piece is more practical for an educator. The overall purpose of these articles was to jointly explore writing strategies organically. For Berkenkotter especially, the recursive nature of writing is highlighted.

Mapping theory:

Well, here we have an example of the “conversation” Green is discussing; Berkenkotter and Murray contribute two parts of the conversation with the discourse community—the reflective quality of Murray’s piece allows for greater depth and understanding of Berkenkotter’s experiment.

Pre-reading exercises:

Writing Rituals—I am an absolute nut when I write. First, I cannot write a single word of my first draft until I feel “ready.” And “ready” could mean anything…I just know that I am unable to write until it feels right. Once I start writing, it goes in stages. Stage one is the café—I set up with coffee, my computer, notes, books, etc., and start crafting  my introduction and some of the body paragraphs. I smoke constantly and drink Americanos until the café closes. I do this for several days in a row. Stage two is the nitty gritty, or maybe it should be called the dirty stage—I hole up at home and sit on the floor in my jammies with hundreds of note cards and post it notes spread out. These get arranged into a movable outline, but mostly, my cat Ms. Talia lays on them. The majority of the writing gets accomplished during this stage, and then it is back to the café for stage three, editing. Stage three looks much like stage one…coffee, smoking, tearing my hair out a lot, commiserating with peers, and then, magically, it is done. It is not a “pretty” process for sure, but it works well for me.

Discussion 1:

I was really intrigued by Murray’s writing process—probably because I continue to feel as though I am refining my own process, always attempt to inch it closer and closer towards a “professional” style. I enjoyed seeing so much of my own process in his—actually relieved! Especially in his penchant to dedicate so much time to the planning stages. I often struggle over my own writing, committing vast amounts of time to just thinking about the writing before anything ever gets committed to paper. Of course we differ significantly in the fact that he dictates his work, so unless I can teach my cat to type for me…I think I will be forced to continue typing everything out myself.

Discussion 3:

Berkenkotter seems to be really surprised by the recursive nature of Murray’s process—she says “These decisions and revisions form an elaborate network of steps as the writer moves back and forth between planning, drafting, editing, and reviewing” (227). It is as if there was an understanding that writers moved continually forward in a linear model: A, B, C, D, etc., as opposed to A, B, A, C, B, D, E, B, etc. The process is not one in which a person moves forward through a series of doors, rooms, and hallways to a specific destination, but goes back and forth through all of them before determining the end location of a text—and as most writers know, the “end” is never just that, as we tend to pick up again and continue with a “finished” piece.

Applying 1:

As an undergraduate, I was definitely big on editing—writing academically and persuasively was a developing concept and to make up for this lack, editing took on a big role. My first year of graduate work was a tough time transition from this lower level of writing to a (more) advanced level—and admittedly, Masters degree in hand, I am still working on upgrading my writing to a professional, scholarly level. If I were to attempt to break down my writing process, I would say I spend 40% of my time in the research and planning (thinking, thinking, thinking) stage, 40% drafting and revising, and 20% polishing and editing. Given my level and experience, I am happy with these numbers, although I definitely seek improving my research strategies to improve the persuasive quality of my work.

Meta Moment:

Although I read my work out loud during revisions and editing, I have never really thought to talk my ideas/thoughts out loud. I am a proficient mutterer, and I often absent mindedly talk to myself—but I do not deliberately say my thoughts out loud. If I take one strategy away from this article, it would be to allow my thoughts to become audible, to really develop this stage where I speak ideas and develop a vocal outline prior to a written outline.

Final thoughts:

These two articles were okay, not riveting by any stretch of the imagination—but reading Murray’s reflection did give me a great sense of relief—relief in feeling that my own process is not so completely off the track of a professional writer. There are plenty of elements to take away (see “meta moment”) for my own purposes, but also in terms of teaching—how do we teach the research/writing process to our students? How do we normalize our own processes and example those to our students? I used to do a great activity with my students at EMU where I would ask them to draw or map out their process then we would look at examples of “professional” processes and compare. As groups, the students would look at a mixture of student and non student processes and attempt to develop the “best” process from their set of examples and we would see how similar or dissimilar each groups was. Although I wouldn’t be crazy about assigning these essays to my students, it might be helpful to read highlights from them in class as a way into an activity like the one above.