Tatiana Schlote-Bonne Week 2
I enjoy the drafting process most, usually because I'm excited by my ideas/notes and want to put everything into scene and get the characters on the page. This enjoyment is probably because all my writing is creative, fun stuff I actually want to be writing. It's been a long time, like years, since I've written an academic paper and I think my method then was to just plow through it and get it over with ASAP.
I really like the app Scapple--it's like a virtual post-it board, and I make idea and plot maps on it when I'm working on a story.
As for unhealthy writing strategies, when I get stuck, I tend to just revise what I already have, and continue to polish my favorite parts instead of plowing through the tough stuff.
I can't say yet about my writing tutor students since I only met them today and haven't seen their writing assignments, but from grading GEL student papers, a common poor writing strategy I see is to just ramble and repeat oneself until the word count is met, which probably originates from having a poorly formed stance for the paper, or maybe they just didn't read the book that closely.
For your example of an unhealthy writing strategy, do you think it's also an example of why organizing the writing process into distinct stages is so important? It sounds like working on sentence-level revisions when the drafting process still isn't completed.
ReplyDeleteI am familiar with the issue of word count. I have found it helpful to have content requirements rather than strict word counts, since it prevents students from using filler to bump up the word count.