Writing is a Process!

One of the many things I've learned over the past year is that writing is a process, and a difficult one at that.  I think this is something I always knew, but I've never spent much time actually acknowledging the fact.  Fortunately, a few experiences this year have really driven this idea home for me.

First of all, I have spent way more time writing and working with writing this year than the past few years.  This fall, I became a Peer tutor at MSU's Writing Center.  This means I work with students writing any paper for any class at any stage in the process.  I have helped with a bit of everything, anywhere from brainstorming to final editing.  This has given me an in-depth look at how complicated, and important, this process is to writing.  As a result, I want to stress this importance to my future students, and help them work through the complicated mess that makes up the writing process.

The first thing I want to stress to my students is that it's okay to write a crappy first draft, if not two or three crappy drafts.  This idea comes from the article "Shitty First Drafts" by Anne Lamott.  When reading mentor texts, all students see is the polished, finished product.  As a result, it is easy to forget that the author went through multiple drafts, and multiple editors, before the work reached that published stage.  More likely than not, their first drafts were not all that hot either.  This is okay.  First drafts are a place to just get ideas on the page.  They don't have to be organized, or grammatically structured, or even complete; they just need to get onto the paper.  I call this writing word vomit.

After making this idea clear.  I want to help students with the writing and drafting process.  To do so, they need to see this process in action.  Consequently, I've adopted Penny Kittle's idea of "Write Beside Them" from her book of the same name.  As teachers, we expect our students to do what we say, but we never show them how we do.  Kittle herself did this for awhile.  She explains this by saying "For years I had expected my students to go swimming without me while I barked orders from my chaise lounge" (7).  She realized her mistake.  Writing teachers must write, and, in doing so, they become a great resource and example for student writers.  Kittle recognizes the importance of the writing process.  She says, "Even grammar suffers as a student learns all skills on a superficial level, with the product in mind, instead of learning how to use the process to give form to a story, idea, or opinion and then to craft the very structure of a paragraph using a complex understanding of rules that govern language to determine how the piece will be read by others" (12).

But how does Kittle teach this process?  She writes besides her students, and shares that writing with them as well.  Kittle uses her own writing to model drafting strategies in class.  They storyboard, they free-write, they edit and revise, all using her own work.  This helps students connect with their teacher.  This person is real, with real stories to tell, and they are involved in the process with their teacher.  Students have a live model to guide their way.  This technique has met with resounding success in Kittle's classroom.  As she says, "They were with me; the room lit up with ideas.  When I finished my modeling, they were ready to write" (10).

This idea of sharing and working with my own writing fascinated me.  So much so that I decided to test it out during my Practicum field experience.  The students were working on narrative writing, and I decided to work on the concept of "show, not tell" with them.  I did part of their assignment myself, writing about my personal odyssey and the meaning of home and family.  I then shared this with students.  With the first chunk, I modeled my own revision process, highlighting moments where I thought I had done well with showing, and showing them how I would revise certain areas for more sensory detail.  I then asked students to do the same with the second chunk.  What had I done well?  What could I specifically do to improve this portion?  Students followed my drafting lead.  They then applied these new concepts to their own writing.  I loved this experience.  I opened myself up to student critique.  This helped me earn their respect and trust.  Students engaged with the material and I watched their writing improve.

Based on the success of this first lesson, I would like to adopt Kittle's theory of writing with students to help them learn the writing process.  Seeing polished examples of writing does not aid the writing process itself.  They must see the process modeled and have a chance to practice themselves.