Sunday, October 24, 2010
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Having nothing else to read on the train every morning, I figured ehh... why not keep on reading Peter Elbow. And it started to like some of the things he wrote, even its first few pages on free writing. He makes good points about keeping a free writing diary. This could get a person writing and could be theruputic. And what better way to master a skill than to practice it over and over again. He hasnt fully convinced me yet but I have to admist that many of his strategies could really allow a person to brainstorm their ideas before they begin writing a paper. He says there will be alot times when you'll have to edit, maybe cross out and add pointers, but you'll be working on all the ideas you have about a topic. You've done that by putting them down on paper without inhibition. Usually, when I write a paper, I go straight to it. But after reading Elbow, I realized how much time I spend on one specific sentence, making sure that it is perfectly written. With all that time, I'm sure there were valuable ideas that I forgot about.
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According to Mike Rose, focusing on making the perfect sentence before writing the entire thing, is called editing when the paper is still premature and not at all ready to be edited. I do agree with you that I don't know if i can just completely lose my mind and do multiple versions of free-writes and then edit them down to make the one final copy of the paper as Elbow describes, but I am learning to tryyy not to worry too much about each and every sentence being perfect or not before I have written down all the ideas that are in my head. Anyway, this is what I'm struggling with now as I write this, for the long paper I have to hand in to Barbara on Wed about writing center theory...
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