I eat a lot...

The process of writing always seems a little sticky. With me, generally literally sticky because I really do eat a lot when I write. It is essential. And I have a thing for jelly. But that is besides the point...Sometimes I wonder at the egoism that goes into proscribing a 'process' for people to follow. It makes sense. As people, we learn by repetition and example. We need things to be delineated into steps to follow and copy. That is how we learn sentence structure. That is how we learn style and voice. That is how we learn to speak and to lift up our fork to eat. However, it is once that the general process is learned that it becomes filled with the small idiosyncrasies that make it your own. I tend to think that once a semblance of a process is learned, it is beneficial to allow anyone to make it their own. To encourage those aberrations from the settled concept and structure. Processes become individualized over time because this is how the product becomes individualized.

For myself, my own process as changed over time. As I have been in different contexts and situations, surrounded by different peers and different models, I have shaped and modeled and molded my own writing process. Sometimes, whatever process I had just fell apart because I didn't want to put in the mental energy to follow a process at all. And that lack of outside construction and effort helped me learn to move beyond the process into a mental free-play. When all is structured, where is the creativity?

I personally have slight ADD. This is probably an exaggeration, but that is what I feel like. I don't like writing for more than 5 minutes at a time. I can sit at a computer desk for 8 hours on a Saturday trying to bust out a paper, but I enjoy distractions. I love mental breaks. I like dim-lit rooms and music. Sometimes lyrics, sometimes not. As long as it gets my brain moving. I don't really pre-write. I like using tons of quotes that I have written down from sources, and I stare at them and sort through them until I know a general plan of how I want to use them. Then I story-board. Every essay is like a story. It has to be cohesive, it has to flow, and it has to make a logical step. I don't like unbalanced essays. And I can sit for hours pondering at a blank page and a blank screen because I don't know how I can make everything I want to say fit together. If there's some quote I really want to use, some concept I really like, I need to make it fit into a grand picture. And so I will create a flow chart generally on a napkin that is left-over from my grapes that I munched on as I first stared at the screen. And I will invariably walk around the house mumbling to myself to try to make sure that these ideas really do flow perfectly together. I will invariably call my mom, asking her if I could make those claims, or how that they sound. She never understands what I am saying, but it is nice to have someone to listen to my ramblings. Always good bonding, too. And so it is a long, slow, painful process. Because I will sit and stare at every sentence. I usually never get to re-writing because I will re-read every paragraph multiple times. By the time I move from the sentence, and then from the paragraph, I am pretty sure I will like how it flows together. I get stumped because I tend to work backwards, from the ending to the beginning. Probably not productive.

I think it is helpful for students to learn to processes of writing outlines, of taking down quotes, of writing precis to make sure they know how to analyze the articles they are going to be using. I think it is helpful for students to write rough-drafts and practice thesis statements and then have to revise their essays. These are all processes that they need to learn to do so that they can find out what suits their own individual style. I think one of the problems with students is that most do not actually try to find their own style of writing, or they do not have to gain experience with any processes at all. In the classroom, perhaps it would be helpful to create more minor-projects, even in-class, that would get students more accustomed to writing anything at all. More essays so that students get used to having to sit down and get one out. It is odd how easily people adjust to things, and perhaps it would be better if the educational system started pressuring students more rather than working down to their level. Why give in to the new mediums? Sure, blogs are handy to get out thoughts. Have the student hand-writing cohesive paragraphs in class and turn them in, and see what you get. I personally think that in order for students to learn to manipulate the many processes that are out there, they have to get to a point where they are comfortable traversing across different processes and combining them in different forms of mediums. I do, however, advocate that everyone have a snack while writing. Might as well make it a little bit enjoyable.