When most people think of writing, they think of it as a structured formatted way, one that is boring and doesn’t allow for expression of thought or personality. But did you ever think that writing can or has the ability to “draw on the full resources of our nervous system, formulating communicative impulses into thoughts and words, and transcribing through the work of the fingers”? This quote comes from Bazerman & Tinberg’s excerpt Writing Is An Expression Of Embodied Cognition, where they discuss and explain that when writers’ are writing, they should completely embody themselves into their piece.
Bazerman & Tinberg further analyze this idea by bringing in an example that compares an experienced, reasoned and evidence-grounded writer to an impassioned writer of love letters. In this comparison, they stated that there were differences in the emotional engagement from scientific writers as they typically write with more evidence and reasoned based information with no passion compared to those of writers who write love letters. Both Bazerman & Tinberg encourage writers to clarify what emotion they engage with depends on the type of writing they are being involved with.
Essentially, the overall “picture” or meaning of what Bazerman & Tinberg are trying to express to readers is that writing, no matter what shape or form, needs to have the “full engagement of the entire writer”, which allows for more expression of thought and emotions to develop over time to create a writer who is able to express oneself through their writing.
Brooke & Carr Perspective
Now, on the discussion of bringing in your own emotions into a piece of writing, many people think that by adding their own thoughts/emotions is a bad thing, one that could potentially lead to failure, especially in writing. But what many don’t know is that there is no such thing as failure. In fact, failure is what allows for a better writing experience and better development of writing skills, which is exactly what Brooke & Carr discuss in their excerpt Failure Can Be An Important Part of Writing Development.
Do you ever or have you ever had a moment in your life where you “failed” something? Whether it was school, a sport or even just talking aloud? Did you ever think that because of those failures you made, they made you a better person or writer? A quote from Brooke & Carr that supports the questions above states that “We often forget, however, that successful writers aren’t those who are simply able to write brilliant first drafts; often the writing we encounter has been heavily revised and edited and is sometimes the result of a great deal of failure”.
Remember, Failure doesn’t mean you’re a horrible or non honorable writer, it means that you’re looking back on mistakes you have made and are willing to correct and define those mistakes to become better. This is how Brooke & Carr explain it further on in their excerpt on page 63, where they state two things, one saying “ They [Students] must have the opportunity to try, to fail and to learn from those failures as a means of intellectual growth “and the second saying that “one of the most important things students can learn is that failure is an opportunity for growth.” Remember, Failure isn’t the end of all things, it just helps shape the pathway for growth and experience.
The Doug Downs Perspective
While what Brooke & Carr say about failure is true, there are also more factors that come into revision in writing. One of the things that Doug Downs mentions in his excerpt Revision Is Central To Developing Writing is that in order “to create the best possible writing, writers work iteratively, composing in a number of versions, with time between each for reflection, reader feedback, and/or collaborator development.” which means that when writers are revising or reediting previously completed works, they look to collaborators and peers for additional support, while also going back and re editing over time.
Downs also mentions a principle in revision that comes from the saying that “writing is not perfectible, writing also is not the category of things that are often right the first time”, which means that when a writer writes something the first time around or even the second or fifth time, it isn’t perfect and is subjected to change. This also comes with Downs stressing the importance of how we teach the centrality of the purpose of revision and how it applies to writing development as a whole as he states “ We must also teach writers to develop workflows that anticipate and rely on revision and to discover what methods of revisions best suit their own writing processes”.
And speaking of revision, Downs states that there is also a phenomenon that helps writers revise, one of which actually stood out to me as a writer myself. This phenomenon was described as having the effect of “driving with headlights” where at the beginning, you only see a fraction of the destination or writing that you’re completing, then as the headlights get wider, you begin to write the first draft or the end of the first reach, and then the headlights or writing keeps getting bigger and bigger and stronger, which allows for better development of revision skills to find and fix mistakes.
The Sommers’ Perspective
Now with all this talk about revising and adding emotion into writing, we come to Nancy Sommers, who in the excerpt Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Writers, discusses the various aspects of revision strategies seen through the eyes of Novice and Experienced Writers.
To give some perspective of what Sommers expands on, she states that she completed a case study approach with students at the University of Boston and University of Oklahoma. During this study, she found that Novice writers viewed revision as a way to “clean up speech” and as a “symbolic importance on their selection and rejection of words as the determiners of success and failure for their compositions.” whereas Experienced writers viewed revision as “finding the form or shape of their argument”.
The vast difference between the views is that novice writers saw writing as a structured and tiered form, specifically when it comes to revising, meaning that it has to be done a specific way or it could lead to potential failure in the aftermath ( newsflash! IT WON’T) and the experienced writers saw writing and their revision that comes from the form or shape of their argument or that they look for ways that “find a framework”, “a pattern”, or “a design” when revising. Additionally, Sommer also mentions a quote from Barthes, which states that “Writing, unlike speech, develops like a seed, not a line”. This quote is a metaphor that describes how revising occurs when writers review their work, either as a novice writer or a well-tuned experienced writer.
Revision/Failure… There is no difference between the two. If thinking that going back and revising the surface-level structured form is a horrible thing, you’re doing it all wrong. Embrace your failures and mistakes, know that they are the biggest allies that you can have, not only in writing but in everyday life
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