Dylan Nice: Post 2

As I read through and consider these strategies for helping students through the drafting process, I'm reminded that I'm a fussy and stubborn drafter: loathe to change things, coddler of "darlings," and prone to "getting stuck." The habits I presribe to my students are healthier than my own practices. Of course, we have to be kind to our own process and kind to that of our students. I do an exercise with mine every semester in which I draw a line across the board--one end of the line is starting a draft, halfway point is completing a rough draft, and finally the end of the line is submitting a final draft. Students are invited to add any part of their process to any point on the line. Often, students add the most points to the line at the very beginning: get a coffee; put on music; adjust the blinds; straighten up the work area; open Word and "Save As" name of assignment. I recognize all their stalling tactics. But, I also assure them it's fine. We all do it. But is it? When does some stalling become too much stalling? Or normal bad habits become bad bad habits? I guess I'm not sure. Here's a story about my bad habits. For years, I've needed to revise an example outline I use for my first major assignment. The outline was adequate, passable as "student work," but I had secretly written it myself! I had even worked hard on it. Still, it had some of the very kinds of mistakes I warn my students against: an overly verbose thesis, underdeveloped sections, some a's without b's and i's with ii's. Each year I reviewed it with them I was reminded just how "adequate" it was, but the urgency to fix it always passed before I actually did. Yesterday, I finally did. I rewrote and reorganized and more fully developed. For now, at least, it appears to be an excellent sample analysis. But, that's what I thought about the old draft at first too. In recognition of that, I'm always sure to reassure students that I'm not looking for perfection. The published essays we read in class, I tell them, sometimes took the author years to write, dozens of drafts, months of putting it away in disgust. What we do in class is practice. We're swinging at pitches but there's no one in the stands. Not yet.

Comments

  1. TatianaSeptember 8, 2020 at 6:55 PM

    Hi Dylan, I hate killing my darlings as well, which is why I let my most trusted reader do it for me when I send him my drafts.

    I like your drawing on the board activity, and yes, the stalling tactics are so tempting to just take part in forever (I'm stalling right now, writing this blog post instead of working on something I need to submit for workshop.)

    To help my students get over the stalling/procrastination phase before beginning their papers, I give my students 10 min or so in class to write a rough intro paragraph on the spot, and then they have to share theirs with a partner, so everyone's forced to produce something. Then once they're all done with that and annoyed I made them share, I give them a rallying speech about how the hard part is over and now they can just continue with those ideas and churn out a full rough draft.

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