University of Cincinnati the Marker’s Eye Essay

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230 WRITERS ON WRITING: HOW AND WHY WE WRITE in relations forward to still another, as I try to see each evolving line every other line. ten; this is how I should have written it." When does this process end? Most writers agree with the great Russia writer Tolstoy, who said, "I scarcely ever reread my published wing, by chance I come across a page, it always strikes me all this must be rew to ignite new meaning. This article has been twice written all the way The maker's eye is never satisfied, for each word has the potential through the writing process.... Now it is to be republished in a bo few small suggestions, and then I read it maker's eye. Now it has been re-edited, re-revised, re-read, and re-re-edited for each piece of writing to the writer is full of potential and alternatives. A piece of writing is never finished. It is delivered to a deadline and shame and pride and frustration. If only there were a couple more out of the typewriter on demand, sent off with a sense of accomplishment days, time for just another run at it, perhaps then.... The editors made with tort THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT THE READING 1. What are the essential differences between revising and editing: What types of language concerns are dealt with at each stage? Why is it important to revise before editing? 2. According to Murray, at what point(s) in the writing process do writers become concerned about the individual words they are using? What do you think Murray means when he says in paragraph 24 that "language leads [writ . ers) to meaning" 3. How does Murray define information and meaning (13-14)? Why is the dis- tinction between the two terms important? 4. The phrase "the maker's eye" appears in Murray's title and in several places throughout the essay. What do you suppose he means by this? Consider how the maker's eye could be different from the reader's eye. 5. According to Murray, when is a piece of writing finished? What, for him, is the function of deadlines 6. What does Murray see as the connection between reading and writing? How does reading help the writer? What should writers be looking for in their reading? What kinds of writing techniques or strategies does Murray use in his essay? Why should we read a novel or magazine article differently than we would a draft of one of our own essays? 7. According to Murray, writers look for information, meaning, audience, form, structure, development, dimension, and voice in their drafts. What rationale or logic do you see, if any, in the way Murray has ordered these items. Are these the kinds of concerns you have when reading your drafts? Explain. 8. Murray notes that writers often reach a stage in their editing where they read aloud, "muttering or whispering to themselves, calling on the ear's experience with language" (23) . What exactly do you think writers are listening for when The Maker's Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts DONALD M. MURRAY In sch writin respo own page chan chair read published works include novels, short stories, criti oth The bot writing for many years at the University of New Hampshire, la Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Donald M. Murray (1924-2006 mater. He served as an editor at Tine magazine, and he won the Prize in 1954 for editorials that appeared in the Boston Globe. Stories, poetry, and RE teachers of writing, like A Writer Teaches Writing: A (1985), The Craft of Revision (1991), and Learning by procese na (1982) in which he explores aspects of the writing process. Write to Learn ed., 2005), a textbook for college composition courses, is based on Man ray's belief that writers learn to write by writing, by taking a piece of writing through the whole process, from invention to revision. In the la decades of his lifc, Murray produced a weekly column entitled "Now anh Then" for the Baston Globe. To the following essay, first published in the Writer in October 1973 and later revised for this text, Murray discusses the importance of revision to the work of the writer. Most professional writers live by the maxim that writing is rewriting." And to rewrite or revise effectively, we need to become better readers of our own work, open to discovering new mean ences of many writers to make a compelling argument for careful revising and editing po as w ta C WRITING TO DISCOVER: Thinking back on your education to date, what dió you think you had to do when teachers asked you to revise a piece of your writing How did the request to revise make you feel? Write about your earliest memories of revising some of your writing. What kinds of changes do you remember making When students complete a first draft, they consider the job of writing done-and their teachers too often agree. When professional writers complete a first draft, they usually feel that they are at the start of the writing process. When a draft is completed, the job of writing can begin. That difference in attitude is the difference between amateur and professional, inexperience and experience, journeyman and craftsman. Peter F. Drucker, the prolific business writer, calls his first draft "the zero draft" – after that he can start counting. Most writers share the feeling that the first draft, and all of those which follow, are opportunities to dis- cover what they have to say and how best they can say it. To produce a progression of drafts, each of which says more and says it more clearly, the writer has to develop a special kind of reading skill. 226 DONALD M. MURRAY:The Maker's Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts 227 ght ma Zer Or ), . of Ft 5 as a stranger. Not Int school we are taught to decode what appears on the page as finished writing. Writers, however, face a different category of possibility and responsibility when they read their page are never finished. Each can be job of writing can begin. own drafts. To them the words on the When a draft is completed, the changed and rearranged, can set off a chain reaction of confusion or clarified meaning. This is a different kind of reading which is possibly more difficult and certainly more exciting. Writers must learn to be their own best enemy. They must accept the criticism of others and be suspicious of it; they must accept the praise of others and be even more suspicious of it. Writers cannot depend on others. They must detach themselves from their own pages so that they can apply both their caring and their craft to their own work. posedly puts each manuscript away for a year to the day and then rereads it many We must read when Writers have the discipline or the time to do this. our judgment may be at its worst, when we are close to the euphoric moment of creation, Then the writer, counsels novelist Nancy Hale, should be critical of everything that seems to most delightful in his style. He should excise what he most admires, because he wouldn't thus admire it if he weren't...in a sense protecting it from criticism." John Ciardi, the poet, adds, "The last act of the writing must be to become one's own reader. It is, I suppose, a schizophrenic process, to begin passionately and to end critically, to begin hot and to end cold; and, more important to be passion-hot and critic- cold at the same time.” Most people think that the principal problem is that writers are too proud of what they have written. Actually, a greater problem for most professional writers is one shared by the majority of students. They are overly critical think everything is dreadful, tear up page after page, never complete a draft, see the task as hopeless. The writer must learn to read critically but constructively, to cut what is bad, to reveal what is good. Eleanor Estes, the children's book author, explains: "The writer must survey his work critically, coolly, as though he were a stranger to it. He must be willing to prune, expertly and hard-heartedly. At the end of each revision, a manuscript may look... worked over, torn apart, pinned together, added to deleted from, words changed and words changed back. Yet the book must maintain its original freshness and spontaneity." Most readers underestimate the amount of rewriting it usually takes to produce spontaneous reading. This is a great disadvantage to the student writer, who sees only a finished product and never watches the craftsman who takes the necessary step back, studies the work carefully, returns to the task, steps back, returns, steps back, again and again. Anthony Burgess, one of the most prolific writers in the English-speaking world, admits, "I might revise a page twenty times." Roald Dahl, the popular children's writer, WRITERS ON WRITING: HOW AND WHY WE WRITE 228 is essentially rewriting. I am positive of this. As questie among subtra Pri F which autho glues mark a large the time in rereading their own work. close theit cach spac gua stru the or D ey been reread and altered and corrected at least 150 times.... Good wym states, "By the time I'm nearing the end of a story, the first part will be simply something that most writers find they have to do to discover who Rewriting isn't virtuous. It isn't something that ought to be done. they have to say and how to say it. It is a condition of the writer's life. marily because they have the capacity and experience to create and review There are, however, a few writers who do little formal rewriting, number of invisible drafts in their minds before they approach the page. And some writers slowly produce finished pages, performing all the tasks of revision simultaneously, page by page, rather than draft by draft But it is still possible to see the sequence followed by most writers mi Most writers scan their drafts first, reading as quickly as possible to catch the larger problems of subject and form, and then move in close and closer as they read and write, reread and rewrite. The first thing writers look for in their drafts is information. They know that a good piece of writing is built from specific, accurate, and interesting information. The writer must have an abundance of informa tion from which to construct a readable piece of writing, Next writers look for meaning in the information. The specifics muse build to a pattern of significance. Each piece of specific information must carry the reader toward meaning. Writers reading their own drafts are aware of audience. They put them. selves in the reader's situation and make sure that they deliver information which a reader wants to know or needs to know in a manner which is easily digested. Writers try to be sure that they anticipate and answer the questions a critical reader will ask when reading the piece of writing. Writers make sure that the form is appropriate to the subject and the audience. Form, or genre, is the vehicle which carries meaning to the reader, but form cannot be selected until the writer has adequate informa- tion to discover its significance and an audience which needs or wants that meaning Once writers are sure the form is appropriate, they must then look at the structure, the order of what they have written. Good writing is built on a solid framework of logic, argument, narrative, or motivation which runs through the entire piece of writing and holds it together. This is the time when many writers find it most effective to outline as a way of visualizing the hidden spine by which the piece of writing is supported. The element on which writers may spend a majority of their time is development. Each section of a piece of writing must be adequately devel oped. It must give readers enough information so that they are satisfied. How much information is enough? That's garlic belongs in a salad. It must be done to taste, but most beginning difficult as asking how much writers underdevelop, underestimating the reader's hunger for information. ru tc a 1 ve 8 it 5 10 DONALD M. MURRAY: The Maker's Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts 229 As writers solve development problems, they often have to consider among all the parts of the piece of writing. There is a continual process of questions of dimension. There must be a pleasing and effective proportion subtracting and adding to keep the piece of writing in balance. Finally, writers have to listen to their own voices. Voice is the force 20 which drives a piece of writing forward. It is an expression of the writer's authority and concern. It is what is between the words on the page, what glues the piece of writing together. A good piece of writing is always marked by a consistent, individual voice. space to wo guage As writers read and reread, write and rewrite, they move closer and closer to the page until they are doing line-by-line editing. Writers read their own pages with infinite care. Each sentence, each line, each clause, each phrase, each word, each mark of punctuation, each section of white between the type has to contribute to the clarification of meaning. Slowly the writer moves from word to word, looking through lan- to see the subject. As a word is changed, cut, or added, as a con- struction is rearranged, all the words used before that moment and all those that follow that moment must be considered and reconsidered. Writers often read aloud at this stage of t of the editing process, muttering or whispering to themselves, calling on the ear's experience with language. Does this sound right-or that? Writers edit, shifting back and forth from eye to page to ear to page. I find I must do this careful editing in short runs, no more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch, or I become too kind with myself. I begin to see what I hope is on the page, not what actually is on the page. This sounds tedious if you haven't done but actually it is fun. Mak- ing something right is immensely satisfying, for writers begin to learn what they are writing about by writing. Language leads them to meaning, and there is the joy of discovery, of understanding, of making meaning clear as the writer employs the technical skills of language. Words have double meanings, even triple and quadruple meanings. 25 Each word has its own potential of connotation and denotation. And when writers rub one word against the other, they are often rewarded with a sudden insight, an unexpected clarification. The maker's eye moves back and forth from word to phrase to sen- tence to paragraph to sentence to phrase to word. The maker's eye sees the need for variety and balance, for a firmer structure, for a more appropriate form. It peers into the interior of the paragraph, looking for coherence, unity, and emphasis, which make meaning clear. I learned something about this process when my first bifocals were prescribed. I had ordered a larger section of the reading portion of the glass because of my work, but even so, I could not contain my eyes within this new limit of vision. And I still find myself taking off my glasses and bending my nose toward the page, for my eyes uncon- sciously flick back and forth across the page, back to another page,
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The marker’s eye: revising your manuscript
Students consider their work done after the first draft, and often their teachers agree.
Professionals consider their first draft as the beginning of the writing process...


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