Section 2: Composing as a Process

Introduction

Seth Graves and Lisa Blankenship

“Writing is a process, not a product,” wrote Pulitzer-winning writing professor Donald Murray in 1972. Writing is a lifelong activity, performed in lots of different spaces, not limited to class essays. And it’s really a process—a messy one at that—of exploring, planning, drafting, and revising. It’s recursive—that is, writers repeat drafting cycles. Yes, generally it results in a product—but writing refers to all of the work that went into getting there.

So, in order to write towards better products, we practice and develop our skills at writing itself. For the past fifty years, scholars in the academic discipline of Rhetoric and Composition have conducted research on the best ways of teaching writing and on how the various and beautifully complicated processes involved with writing actually work. They continue to find that writing not only places what we want to say on the page, but helps us discover and reach new ideas during the act of writing itself.

Viewing and practicing writing as process forms one of our five major course goals and is a major theme of this book beyond just this section. Pieces throughout this collection discuss the complex process of discovering what it is you have to say, especially within the genres of writing you’ll encounter in this course, and organizing how you say it.

This section begins with "Reading and Writing," where Daniel Libertz explores the benefits for understanding the connections between reading and writing while also offering strategies for making these connections. In "On Writing as Style and Entering a Conversation," Lisa Blankenship reminds us that our choices when we write are related to the circumstances—the rhetorical situation—of our writing. In "Suffer Less," Kate Eickmeyer speaks to the emotional challenges of writing that students and professional writers alike can feel. The final pieces in this section focus on revision and review. Madeleine Barnes's "Making and Unmaking: Finding Agency in Revising Your Writing" offers sage advice for approaching writing and rewriting. Molly Mosher's "Peer Review: An Exercise in Learning from Each Other" asks writers to take a step back from composing to help their fellow writer (and gain insight into their own work in the process).

Think of this class as an opportunity to become a better writer through the process of writing itself—a process that can help you discover what it is you think, express what may seem inexpressible, and engage more effectively with others in the world.

Work Cited

Murray, Donald. "Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product." Learning by Teaching. Boynton/Cook, 1982, pp. 14–17. Originally published in The Leaflet, Nov. 1972, pp. 11–14.

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