Berkenkotter/Murray Reading

Summary: This article discussed the revising habits of writers, varying in ages and abilities. The observers of this experiment not only looked at their subjective testimonies about their revising habits, but monitored them with video cameras for a period of two years. The article describes their findings and attempts to explain their actions. Questions For Discussion 1. Murray described his writing environment as being in his study, with a long white wooden table, which looks out on the New Hampshire woods. There is also a poster of a littleboy and a dragon that reads "Donald imagined things." This compares somewhat to my writing environment. I like to surround myself with things that will engage my mind and my thoughts, however I do require somewhat quiet/peaceful/nondistracting surroundings so I can actually get things done.. 2. I try as best as I can to be conversational with my audience. I believe papers are easiest to write and read when they have a personality. It is sometimes a fine line that I have trouble with when I am trying to put a personality to my paper, but not go into innappropriate/unnecessary territory. 3. Berkenkotter realized how much of the writing process is subconscious. Also she came to find that stating goals for yourself, and your paper can change the way inwhich you look at writing. On page 223 in the second paragraph, it said "In this instance, we can see how a writing plan leads to a number of sub-plans" Applying and Exploring Ideas My own writing habits are not very proactive. I am the kind of person who knows their topic for a week or two, and doensn't necessarily type out my paper, but I write it in my head over and over until I have the version of it that I want. I usually organize in my head my thorough introduction, then my main points then a vague idea of my conclusion. I think this is a fairly common, yet unprofessional way of writing. I am brainstorming...but in my head and not out loud. Then I wait for the last minute to take the paper that is in my head, and bring it to life. I believe that there is a certain corrolation to the amount of writing experience you have, and the amount of time you put into a paper. I believe until a certain extent, I will always brainstorm papers the way I have literally since the beginning of time, however with more intelligence and purpose as I get older. However, I assume once I get to a certain level of writing, I will then be doing it because I want to, and not because I have to. Then, I will put more time and effort into my paper because I am doing them by choice and not as an assignment. Meta Moments I have learned that revising and editing are two different things. I used to think that they were the same process. Now I know that revising is looking at the placement of sentences/ideas, and looking at the overall flow of the ideas. And I know that editing is looking for spelling/grammatical errors that do not actually pertain to the theme/ideas of the paper, but the technical issues of the paper. My Opinion I think this was one of the harder articles to get through. Maybe because it was two articles kinda crammed into one, or maybe it was my focus. However, I found it informational. Especially because we are getting ready to turn in our first paper.

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