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Learning to Write Well
http://www.billstifler.org/cstcc/writwell.html
©Bill Stifler, 1998
Writing is hard work.
Writing is hard work. One of the mistakes beginning students make is in thinking that writing is only hard for
them, that somewhere out there are people who find writing easy.
That's not true. I'll grant you there are people who can spin off
words with little thought or effort, and sometimes their writing may
even be good--but not often. And when the writing is good, it
frequently comes out of long experience or deep pleasure in the subject.
Writing is hard work for all of us. The blank page threatens us. Don Murray says the writer's main resource is himself, and
there lies our fear, that we can't write because we haven't anything worth saying.
Students sometimes feel that they not only have nothing to say, but
couldn't say it if they did. Students are plagued by problems in
spelling or grammar, difficulties in organizing their thoughts on paper
or explaining themselves clearly. Anger, defensiveness, and
embarrassment are typical reactions to these fears.
One reason for students' fear is that they feel uncertain about their
use of grammar and spelling. Their concerns for creating a "perfect"
essay get in the way of their ideas. Grammar and spelling are like the
directions to baking a cake or making a pizza--necessary, but hardly
satisfying. The only way to learn how to write is by writing. After
all, no one learns how to
ride a bicycle by studying
Pinkerton's Manual of Bicycle Maintenance and Repair.
Too often, students focus on grammar and spelling early because they
view writing as a chore to finish as quickly as possible. The poet
William Stafford once wrote that "A writer is not so much someone who
has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will
bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not
started to say them" (Stafford 17). The real pleasure in writing
doesn't come from knowing what to say but from the joy of discovering
what we don't know, didn't guess, until we discovered it on the page
before us. Once we know
what we want to say, then we can concentrate on
how to say it--clearly, concisely, convincingly,
and correctly.
Standard English must always strike an American as a bit stilted.
H. L. Mencken, late American journalist (Pinckert 7)
There was a long pause after I gave my answer to the question just
asked by my eleventh grade British Literature teacher. Then she said,
"Why do you do that?"
I had no idea what she was talking about.
"Why do you talk like that? I know you
know good English. I've seen you use it in your assignments. So why don't you use it when you speak?"
I was being perfectly serious when I answered her, "because no one talks that way."
While I hadn't read Mencken, I certainly understood what he was
saying. A student originally from Pakistan once asked me why some
American students had so much trouble writing. "I know why I'm in this
class, but I don't understand why my fellow students are here. After
all, they've grown up speaking English."
And there's the rub. You
have grown up speaking
English. And spoken English (or conversational English) is very
different from written English (or edited English, sometimes referred to
as standard or correct English). When we speak, we take shortcuts, use
half-phrases; we gesture; we stress certain sounds or slur others, and
everyone who belongs to the same social group or who comes from the same
part of the country understands what we mean. This difference betwen
spoken English and edited English is one of the reasons we struggle as
writers.
When I first came to Chattanooga, people told me I was rude and
anti-social. When I passed people on the sidewalk or in the hall, I
routinely heard the same lament, "Aren't you going to say, hi?"
But I had. I grew up in a rural county in southern Pennsylvania.
When we passed people working in the fields or driving along the road,
it was customary to nod slightly or lift a finger. If we were walking
by each other, we might only raise an eyebrow (without the quizzical
expression that accompanies Spock's well-known gesture). I had been
nodding, lifting fingers, and raising eyebrows to everyone I met. I
had been saying hello. They simply hadn't understood, and it was some time before
I understood.
Now I've learned to talk to people (although I still find myself
slipping, unthinkingly, into my old ways when I'm preoccupied with my
own thoughts).
In a very real way, learning to write in edited English is like
learning a second language. You have to break away from some of the
habits of spoken English and learn to write according to the rules of
edited English rather than by what feels comfortable.
Even though I am now an English teacher myself, I still stand by
the answer I gave my eleventh grade teacher some twenty years ago. It
is not my purpose to change the way you speak. Part of the pleasure of
language lies in the idiosyncracies peculiar to the various cultures
that make up our country. What would the
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
be like if some "correct" English teacher had removed from it all of
the slang, contractions, idiosyncracies, fragments, verb disagreements,
weak pronoun references, and assorted other grammatical abuses
speckled across its pages? And yet, this grammatical and syntactical
atrocity is considered by many to be America's greatest work of
literature.
On the other hand, Mark Twain (known to family and friends as Sam Clemens)
knew
good grammar, and he used
it, when the occasion called for it. As an editor and newspaperman, he
often corrected the grammatical abuses of those who wrote for his paper.
Nearly all of the writing you will do in school and much of the
writing that you will do in your chosen professions (whether a memo to
your fellow workers or a poster to be hung in the church vestibule) must
be written in edited English. Edited English is the language of
education, and if you intend to be a part of that world--as you must or
you wouldn't be reading this syllabus--you must learn to speak its
language.
Every writer I know has trouble writing.
Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22 (Winokur 104)
Ever hear a child tell a joke? The story rambles, drags in a hundred
different unrelated ideas and sputters to an end, the point of the joke
lost in the shuffle. We nod politely, try to sort out the muddle only
to have the child look us in the eye and tell us we were supposed to
laugh. In other words, quit trying to make sense out of this. It's a
joke. If we press the issue, the child either learns how to tell a joke
or learns to quit telling them to us.
The struggle to write is something like that. We know what we
want to say, may even be fascinated by some of the sparkling ideas that
occur to us, and we rush pell-mell to scratch them out on paper, filled
with the satisfaction of discovery. Later we turn the paper in or,
worse, read it over ourselves and find that what we've written is not
brilliant or even smart but a confused mess of half-ideas and rabbit
trails.
The problem doesn't lie with our ideas. The problem is we lack the skill to present them clearly and convincingly for a reader.
We could give up, never risk looking foolish or stupid. Only our
teachers won't let us. They keep insisting we write--essay exams, term
papers, research projects, book reports--the list is endless. We can't
drop out; most students in a community college are there because they
need the degree to find a better job. We could find someone to write
our papers for us, but sooner or later we're going to have to write
things for ourselves--if not in class, then in the workplace.
Writing is the easiest thing in the world to do. Writing is the hardest thing in the world to do.
Richard Jackson, an English professor at the University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga, says that the purpose of writing is "to find
out
something about your life" (2). In order for writers to be successful
they
must care about what they write. The best writing comes from the heart.
My goal is to help you keep (or regain, or perhaps, even discover) the
enthusiasm for seeing your ideas unfold on paper. And I want to help
you learn to refine those ideas for your readers to make them clear,
concise, correct, and convincing. We'll review grammar, not because
good grammar makes good writing but because good writing generally uses
good grammar. Our focus will always be on learning how to write.
Ideally, good grammar should be instinctive, automatic. The problem is
that our instincts have been trained in conversational English flavored
by our local dialects or, in some cases, by growing up with another
language altogether. We will look at the major errors people make in
writing edited (or academic) English and work on ways of weeding these
errors out of our writing. And don't be embarrassed by your own
grammatical mistakes. All of us make them, even English teachers.
Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.
Joan Didion, modern essayist (Winokur 91)
While Joan Didion seems to be contradicting what I have been saying
about writing according to rules rather than according to what is
comfortable, I believe what she is saying is that good writing
sounds good,
the best writers combine the comfortable ebb and flow of conversational
English with the strength and simplicity of conventional grammar. Good
writers develop a feeling for when to bend the rules. For a few
semesters in college, I was a music minor, and part of my training
included a course in Elementary Harmony. I remember Mr. Henley telling
us the first day of class that we must learn the rules and conventions
of good harmonics (like seventh chords resolving to
octaves or second chords resolving in the root). Then he smiled and
said, "All of the masters broke these rules. The
only rule is that what
sounds good
is good." Then he paused, "But before you can break the rules, you must
first learn the rules."
Learning the rules requires practicing them in writing. But that
puts us back where we started, caught between ideas and rules. What we
need to be successful as writers is a
plan.
The Writing Process
Prewriting (Exploring)
How do I know what I think, until I see what I say?
E. M. Forster (Plimpton 101)
The last thing one knows when writing a book is what to put first.
Blaise Pascal (Plimpton 167)
Frequently on the first day of class, I require students to write a
diagnostic essay in thirty minutes. With so little time, students feel
certain that there is only one thing to do, tighten the cinch and send
the pen racing across the page. Uncertain how to begin, students
stumble out of the starting gate, their first few lines faltering.
Eventually they catch their stride and manage to finish, wheezing,
uncertain, windblown and walleyed.
About the middle of the paper, some students will begin to get an
idea of what they could write and hesitate. Should they start over?
But there isn't time. Most straggle on. Some few, turn around and
begin afresh. In either case, the writing suffers.
To finish well, the writer must start well. And the only way to have a good beginning is to jot down ideas
before beginning to write.
One of my college teachers often interrupted his lectures to say, "If
you remember nothing else this semester, remember this . . ." and then
some homey advice followed. One of the most valuable things students
learn from writing process is the
necessity of prewriting.
Prewriting can be as simple as thinking about a topic before writing
or can include various writing strategies like brainstorming, branching,
free writing, or outlining. The important thing is taking time to
explore ideas, to develop a sense of topic and theme, to warm up.
Writing (Drafting)
The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
Bernard Malamud (Plimpton 101)
It's
like improvising in jazz. You don't ask a jazz musician, "But what are
you going to play?" He'll laugh at you. He has a theme, a series of
chords he has to respect, and then he takes up his trumpet or his
saxophone, and he begins. . . . Sometimes it comes out well, sometimes
it doesn't.
Julio Cortázar (Plimpton 104)
Once we have an idea of what we want to say, the temptation comes to
proceed slowly and carefully, teasing each word from the page. But
hesitating over spelling, grammar, typos or the right word can be
deadly. While some writers (substitute chronic or paranoid
perfectionists) write this way (Physician, heal thyself), most writers,
and especially beginning writers, need the freedom to finish their
thoughts before taking time for spit and polish. In fact, worrying
about grammar and spelling is often the largest stumblingblock in the
way of student writing because it can focus attention away from meaning.
Sometimes we have no choice. Timed essays, like the diagnostic,
leave little or no room for second drafts. We have to do our best first
time out. Most teachers take this into consideration when grading.
But when we have the time, we should indulge ourselves. Knowing that
this is only a first draft, that time can be set aside for changes and
corrections, frees us from the fear of making mistakes. We know we are
making mistakes. It's okay. This is just the first draft.
Rewriting (Revising)
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
Thomas Mann (Plimpton vii)
The hardest thing in the world is simplicity.
James Baldwin (Plimpton 126)
Most students assume that revision is a question of removing grammar
mistakes or correcting spelling errors. A few adventurous students may
recast a sentence, reversing the order of words to add variety to their
writing like advertisers designing a new corn flakes box.
While variety, like a fresh coat of paint, can dress up an old house,
revision goes deeper. Writers revise to discover meaning not pretty
it. And as they discover what they are trying to say, they learn how to
say it.
This, of course, means that the first draft is only that, a beginning
in the search for meaning. Peter F. Drucker refers to it as "the zero
draft" (Murray 68). That's not to lessen its importance. Until we
commit ourselves to paper and ink, all we have are ideas. There are
several million Great American Novels bursting in the minds of aspiring
young writers. And they will be buried with them.
The worst part about revision is that it hurts. After finally
managing to pour out our feelings on paper, some cold-hearted English
teacher (in your case, me) takes his Almighty pen to our papers leaving
livid scars of red, green, or orange (disguising his cruelty behind
protective coloring). The last thing we want is to identify the corpse
or claim the body. Let the dead bury the dead, and let's move on to the
next assignment.
When I was a sophomore in college, I turned in a composition about
the long walks I took as a teen reading and memorizing. My teacher,
sensitive to my feelings, suggested I write another composition. He
didn't want to spoil my memories in the struggle of writing about them.
While I like and respect him, he did me a disservice. Writing must
come from the heart, and revision is our willingness to suffer, to admit
our inabilities and faults so we can move on. In fact, our writing
sometimes falters the most just at the point where it has the most to
say (Murray 90).
Each writer must find his or her own path to revision. Some find it
best to rough out an entire draft without stopping and then go back and
tear it apart for the best parts to use in the next draft. Others move
sentence by sentence, teasing the words, fussing over them, working to
make each line perfect before moving on. Each approach has its
advantages and disadvantages, and sometimes students may find themselves
shifting back and forth between the two from assignment to assignment
(Reed 28-37).
Donald Murray suggests three kinds of reading as we struggle toward meaning: reading for
focus,
form and
voice.
Reading for focus means reading for the one meaning that is
struggling to express itself in our text. Murray suggests we quickly
read a draft, trying to see it the way a reader will. The aim at this
stage is to make the words as clear as possible, to avoid rabbit trails
and stick to the point, to say enough but not too much (91).
Next he suggests reading the draft more slowly, a bite at a time,
looking for "chunks of meaning." As we read for form, we ask ourselves
if the introduction, illustrations, examples, arguments and conclusion
do the job or are simply ornamentation, included because we think we
ought to include them, and not because we need them to make the writing
clear (91).
Finally we should read paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence,
line by line, word by word. At this stage it often helps to read a
draft aloud to see if it sounds like one person speaking. Reading aloud
also helps us find the places where our writing starts to slip away.
If we stumble over a word or phrase, if we find ourselves out of breath,
or lose our place, then our writing still needs work. This is also the
time to focus on grammar and spelling, recognizing that grammar and
spelling errors confuse our meaning and weaken our expression. In
writing for voice, we put the finishing touches to our work, striving to
make it "simple, clear, graceful, accurate and fair" (93, 94).
-
-
- On Writing
I've tried to think what I could tell you,
about the way words feel, the sound
they make when they touch, the way
words fight you, fall flat, clattering
like pans to a kitchen floor or the slap
of a tire limping, only you know all
this, and I wonder if there is anything
I could tell you, or tell myself,
because words make their own way,
play by their own rules, and all we do,
if we're lucky, is find them.
Bill Stifler (Stifler)
Writing is never easy. Writing this, I found myself struggling to
find just the right image to make my point, worrying not only about
getting my meaning across, but also about your reaction to me as a
writer and teacher. Have I caught your interest? Is the tone right?
Have I buried students under a list of requirements or encouraged them
to see the assignments as just one more part of the writing process,
focusing on learning rather than grading?
Writing is never a one-side affair. It is always an interaction
between author, reader, text, and topic. My purpose in teaching writing
is to help you in your struggles with writing. Often I assign specific
topics, and I will be your most ardent reader. Besides, I like working
with student texts. H.G. Wells once said, "No passion in the world is
equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft" (Plimpton 134). Don
Murray says
- It's wonderful to invade a piece of student writing. The better the writing is the more I am
tempted to get inside it, to manipulate it, to make it mine. And sometimes in conference I will tell
a student, "This is a really good piece of writing. Do you mind if I mess with it?"
She looks apprehensive but she is a student. She nods okay.
Gleefully, I mess around for a few lines or for a few paragraphs. I sharpen, I cut, I
develop; I add my words for hers, my rhythm, my meaning.
"That isn't right at all. That doesn't sound like me," she says. "That isn't the way it was.
Give me back my writing."
She grabs it from my desk and charges out of the office.
Good. She has the feel of writing. (49)
Works Cited
Jackson, Richard. "Under Constant and Careful Revision: Creative Writing in the University." Unpublished essay.
SAMLA Conference. Atlanta, 1 Nov. 1985.
Murray, Donald M.
Learning by Teaching: Selected Articles on Writing and Teaching. Boynton/Cook Publishers,
1982.
Pinckert, Robert C.
Pinckert's Practical Grammar. Cincinnati: Writer's Digest Books, 1986.
Plimpton, George, ed.
The Writer's Chapbook: A Compendium of Fact, Opinion, Wit, and Advice from the 20th
Century's Preeminent Writers. New York: Viking, 1989.
Reed, Kit.
Revision. Cincinnati: Writer's Digest Books, 1989.
Stafford, William.
Writing the Australian Crawl: Views on the Writer's Vocation. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan
Press, 1986.
Stifler, Bill. "On Writing."
Bridging English. Joseph O'Beirne Milner and Lucy Floyd Morcock Milner. MacMillan, 1993.
Winokur, Jon, ed.
Writer's On Writing. Philadelphia: Running Press, 1986.
