how do I compose thee, let me count the ways...

When I write in my journal, I don’t do any pre-meditative writing. Usually, I just open up the page and let it all come out. I also don’t normally re-read that writing, ever. There have been a couple of times where I’ve gone back and done some reading because I wanted to try to track down a certain day, or I was just board, but normally that’s just it, I do the writing, and leave it.

Now, when I’ve got a paper to write for school, work, publication, etc the process differs greatly of course. Usually I procrastinate (which I’ve recently learned from faculty in departments outside of Humanities is really a faculty thing to do), but I try to think in my head about what I want to write, who my audience is and what the end product should feel like. Then I start by making a list. The list can be long or short, but usually just outlines what my goal(s) is(are). If I’ve got a specific question that I’m trying to answer, I normally go over it and try to break it apart so that I can figure out what kind of answer I’m looking to get. Then, I do my research if necessary. Next, I start to write. I don’t usually have a preset agenda with this writing, its more or less just to get everything I have in my head about the subject out. Sometimes I read over this writing, other times I’ll have DH look over it and see if he can pull any seeds of good thought out of the pile of manure. And most of it is manure, but I still have to see the poop in order to figure out what I’m doing. Or maybe a better way to put it, is to see what I’m thinking. This process occurs so many times its not funny, more reading, more re-writing, more talking, more reading, more re-writing, until I’m close to a point of completion, then I start to read my work aloud and work on the more superficial level of fixing it up. Peter Elbow discusses this in his Introduction to Writing Without Teachers (1998, Second Edition). Elbow writes:

I had to write down without stopping whatever came to me in my thinking about my general topic, and above all I had to stop worrying about whether what I was writing at the moment was any good. I had to invite chaos and bad writing. Then, after I had written a lot of thinking, I could go back and find order and reassert control and try to make it good. (xviii)

I don’t think I really realized how important this step is for my writing process until I read Elbow. Another Elobowian thought that I’m just coming to realize is the idea that writing is a process that should free you:

Writing is, in fact, a transaction with words whereby you free yourself from what you presently think, feel, and perceive. You make available to yourself something better than what you’d be stuck with if you’d actually succeed in making your meaning clear at the start. (15)

I think this is important not only for growth in professional writing, but also with personal more ‘emotional’ writing. (I put that word in parentheses because all writing is emotional, but I just can’t find a better way to express what I’m thinking). So often I feel like I don’t get much out of my journal, but as I said before, I don’t go back and re-read or more importantly RE-THINK what I’ve written, its just there and that’s it. Now, I wouldn’t necessarily go back and change what I’ve written or erase anything, but it could be valuable in both a spiritual and emotional way to read and then write about what I’m thinking, as a way of growing from that original thought.


Something interesting I’ve noticed with my blogging is that it seems like I do a combo of both composing methods. Its part “let it all dump out of my head,” and part think, write, read, think, re-write, read, re-write, publish. I’m interested in how blogging might change the way we think about writing, or the process we use. In some ways, I like my blog better than my journal, but there are definitely things I wouldn’t blog about that I would journal about. Though, I have noticed here lately that my journal has become a place where my primary focus =s worrying, so its good for my mind to have a place where I can think about something else, or write about something else. Not that I haven’t vented worries and frustrations here.

I just can’t help but to notice I would have never journaled this entry. So is a blog just what you make it? What makes it different from what you do in a journal? Is it what is written or is the blog inherently different from a journal?
I don’t quite know exactly where all this came from today. I was talking with a friend who graduated at the same time I did with her MA in English (she was lit, I was comp/rhet) and I told her I was a bit afraid of how I’d do in after a PhD program, when you really have to write and publish. We both agreed that it feels easier when you have deadlines imposed upon you. But, I’m not in school and with one year before I start school, and being 2 (3 years) out, I really feel like I need to do more writing. I don’t even want to say at this point that the blog will serve as a place for me to do that, but who knows.