EN305 Writing Process Report If we want to develop as writers, it is important to develop a more robust, complex understanding of writing and the writing process. The best way to develop that kind of understanding is to examine what accomplished writers have to say about their approach to the writing process. In this essay, you will be doing just that. You will develop a research question about the writing process, then use what professional writers have said about that topic to write a report that answers that question. Audience: Purpose: Genre: Your EN305 classmates Help your EN305 classmates develop a more complex understanding of how professional writers think about one particular element of the writing process Report (Chapter 2 of How to Write Anything) Step 1: Survey the archives In order to make it a little easier to find what professional writers have said about the research process, we’ll be starting with a couple of archives of essays by and interviews with published authors: • New York Times’ “Writers on Writing.” This is a series of essays written by professional writers about topics related to writing. http://www.nytimes.com/books/specials/writers.html • Interviews with writers from the Paris Review. The Paris Review is a literary journal that has a deep archive of interviews with famous writers. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews • New York times’ “Why I Write.” In 2011, the Times asked seven journalists similar questions about their background with and approach to writing. http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/why-i-write-q-and-a-with-seventimes-journalists/ You can find sources that aren’t in these archives, if you wish, but these should provide you with a good start. Take a little while to browse through the archives. Get a good feel for the kind of information in each, and sample a couple of entries to get a feel for the kind of things the writers tend to be interested in. Step 2: Develop a research question After you have familiarized yourself with the archives, you should develop a specific research question for the assignment. As you are thinking about your research question, look over your classmates’ responses to discussion question 1, are there any topics there that strike a chord with you? Think back, too, over the work you’ve done in step one. Did you notice any patterns as you were skimming the archives or did any particular response strike you as work exploring further? The best questions are narrow without being simplistic and arise out of a genuine sense of curiosity. You want your search to be manageable, but you also want to make sure that your search results help your reader develop a more complex understanding of a topic related to the writing process. Here are some ideas to get you started: • Did one of your classmates ask a question you’ve always wanted to know more about? • Is there some element of writing you’ve always struggled with? • Did you see any ideas in the archive that struck you as particularly odd or interesting? • Did you notice any trends or patterns in the archives (similar ideas that came up multiple times)? • Did you spot any tensions in the archives (maybe writers seemed to have different opinions about something or maybe different kinds of writers thought differently about process)? • Did any ideas in the archives resonate with your own experience (maybe you always listen to music when you write and you are interested in whether or not professional do, too)? • Did you notice any attitudes or approaches to writing that may have changed over time? Step 3: Determine a research method and conduct research. Once you have your research question, you need to figure out the best way to find the answer. In some cases, for instance, you may find that you are interested in one particular author, so you may have to go to other sources to find out more about that person. Or you may want to survey as much data as possible, so searching for key words on multiple pages (using Ctrl-F) might be the way to go. Or you may want to find a couple of representative examples to compare and contrast. Each approach requires different sources. In some cases you may only use one part of one archive, while in others you might use all the archives. Or you might find that you need to move beyond the archives to find information that might help you answer your question. Once you’ve found the method that works best for you. Dive in. Make sure you take good notes and always keep track of what sources your information is coming from. A lot of instances of plagiarism come from poor notetaking in the research phase of an assignment. Step 4: Compile research results and draft the essay. In order to help your reader develop a more complex understanding of your topic, you want to make sure you pay close attention to what information you include and how you present various pieces of information relative to each other. That is, you want to avoid a simple “information dump” where you simply summarize information from each source. Instead, you want to make sure that you are presenting information in a way that helps answer your question. This means that you need to put information from various sources together and you need to spend time explaining what the information means and how various pieces of information relate to each other. Step 5: Review and Revise As with any essay, step back from your work, have others look at it, and re-think what you said and how you said it. Then, jump back in to revise your writing—consider both what you say, and how you say it. Details Length: Citation: Due Dates: About 5-7 pages (typed, double-spaced, with 12 pt. font and 1” margins) Sources must be cited in accordance with MLA or APA format Draft due: Saturday of week 2 by 11:55 p.m. (post to discussion forum) Essay due: Saturday of week 7 by 11:55 p.m. (submit to assignments area)
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