Writing Makes Us Writers

                             When you want to be a writer, write. Start writing and keep writing. Your writing makes you a writer. When our object is to write we don't have to be perfect, but it is good to be good.

                        So, write something. Consider taking ten minutes to write a paragraph. Write something about what you would like to write about.

                        I used to use a timer when I wrote and found it helpful in several ways. For example, I found myself stopping to make corrections or to rewrite so often that I lost my line of thought and wasted time. So, I set my timer to ring in five minutes and did not stop for anything until I heard that ring. Then, if I felt like it I made corrections or changes. I also found that it helped to have the nature of a pararagraph somewhere near the conscious level of my mind. Neither of these doings is completely necessary. Certain doings are more important as you begin to write. Having a table and chair handy may prove helful. Pencil and paper and your glasses at hand may be a good idea. Maybe a computer with a speech to print app at hand and warmed up could make your writing flow more easily.

                    For this writing do not stop to make corrections or to edit. Just keep writing. Do not go back to read or anything. Just write. This practice can help you to accomplish writing.

                        When we are note-taking or writing a first draft it is often best not to take time for editing, improving word choice, or executing excelent  punctuation. You may write more efficiently when you complete such acts in your final draft or your penultimate one. It's OK to change your mind, but often best to express that which is on your mind at first. Which is often a more efficient way of writing. Later you can look over your writing and get a better idean of wht you were trying to get at. Seems that I have writen elsewhere recently that that we grow and develp as we write.

                        Well, did you write for five or ten minutes, relax for a while and then read what you have written. If so you can make additions and corrections as you like. Congratulations. Relax for a minute or five. You have written. You are a writer.

                        Now reread what you have written. Don't throw it away yet. You may get a surprisingly use idea from it which you can use right now or later.

                        If  you still feel like writing, do it. You can make your corrections and additions. Maybe you made a wrong meaning in a wrong word. You can double check the meanings of the words you are not completely sure of. This could be a good learning experience for you and good the the meaning and clearity of your paragraph. It could even help your reader to get that which you want her to understand or feel.

                        One changes as one writes. One's writing changes as one changes. We grow and develop as we write and our writing grows and and develops as we do so. 

                        Your most embarrasing paragraph or sentence can contain a gem or seed from great writing. Where you see the possibility for that gem or seed make a stab at bringing it out, clearifying it, or even making it shine and grow.

                    I am so old now that I am losing skill faster than I am learning. Even so, I am remember ing some past experience. After three or so of the writings were were just talkng about and if you have saved that which you have written, you'll have a pile of rubble. When you look over that rubble try not to over look seeds and gems. You are nearly sure to find words, phrases, and a sentence or two which seem important.

                    Use some careful thought and editorial discrimination to see what your words, pharses, and sentences add up to. Decide how much you believe them. Arrange them somehow so that the make sense. write some new and connecting parts if you wish.

                        We could call this your first real draft. We could also say that you have begun your career as a practiced writer. Congratulations!

                        When you feel like writing more you may find that when you keep alert to finding an "an emergent center of gravity" as you write, you may find one.

                        That emergent center may help you to more clearly see what you are writing about. Clarifying what you are writing about is often a big help. I am remembering now that at this point I sometimes found that which I thouht ought to be the beginning of a paper ought to end it and what I thought ought to end it was better as a beginning.

You can find the following as aids to finding and clearifying that center of gravity:

~ As you write you may honestly come to say, "Ah, now I see what I have been getting at." Pay attention.

~ Finish what you are writing about. Put it aside for a time. See useful implications as you look it over again.

~ See that your good idea is crap. Then see tat part of it is les crappy. Sort out the good parts from the bad. You don'thave to throw anything away. You may come to see that some of it is better than your favorite idea.

~ Your first writing may be good scaffolding fir your next writing.

~ You can find a powerful spark in a tiny digression of yours. You may keep the same elements of your work, but change the whole orientation for the better. 

~ See your work improve as you improve. See yourself improve as your work improves. 

~ As you progress in a piece of writing, be alert to an emerging focus or theme. Its OK to let your focus ortheme improve.

~ If notheing emerges in a piece you are writing, sum up thar which you have written, then sumit up again.

~ Push yourself a bit to keep getting some center of gravity or summing-up to occur. 

~ Work gradually toward moderation from extreme positions. If you feel you must be immoderate in a given case, make sure that you are being extremely honest and realistic.

~ Its fair and good to explain your position and its source.

~ Keep writing.

                    It is possible to learn a lot by helpimg others to develop their craft. That could be done in a writing group or you may do it by your suggestions or examples in the "comments" section below. Share an experience, information, or understanding. Pass it on here. You can even ask a question. You can help me by proof reading this piece and making sugestions or correcting my spelling. This is  a way to be a published writer!

                    Thank you for reading and thank you for writing.

                                                                                                rcs

Feedback for Writers

Write With RCS: Find out more about a writing Group and feedback. We may not need it but, it sure can help. 

                You can see that I have posted often about writing, writers and writing groups when you review the labels list in the column to the right of this post.
                   

             You may have already come to see that I believe that a teacherless writing group is a great way to great writing.

            A main purpose of such groups is the providing of appropriate feedback to writers about how their writing effects readers of their work.
                   

            I intend to write more  about developing and providing useful feedback to writers in the future.
                However, while I'm here I'll try to write something about better reading and more useful feedback.  

                In your writing group you can become a better reader and perceiver. No one is truly able to tell you that your perceptions are right or wrong. However, as a reader in a writing group you can be honest, can practice, and can learn.

            By using your perception, your perception can become more accurate and more useful.

                Your job as a reader of the works of others in your writing group is, to tell the writer what you really see and how you really react to his writing(I could say "her"rather "his," for a writing group may include female writers or may be made up entirely of female writers, but I will not). You as a good reader will know that you can learn to see better and to experience more fully.  

                As you help the writer become a better writer, you become a better reader. As you become more of an expert you may begin to feel that you are always right. I my experience, that is never true. What seems true to me is that as you continue to practice you can become a more agile, flexible, refined reader, and a more honest one.

                Learning to be a better reader is a process of character building. You may find yourself becoming both more sure of yourself and more humble.

                I have a lot to learn about my writing. I can benefit from good feedback. You can offer me some in the "comments' section below. 


                                                        by Richard Sheehan












 

Writing About Another Blogger's Work

 Write With RCS: Posting to, on, and about another blogger's posts. It's the Bloggers' Code.

 

 In posting about another blogger's post I hope to do most of the following so as to look good and to have a positive effect on post readers, blogs, blogging, writing and humanity:

1. Provide a bit more evidence and documentation for my assertions than I have in the past.

2.List important references and bibliographic items.

3. Name my post or response in a way useful to the reader. 

4. Name the author I am responding to.

5. Name the particular Writing of that author to which I am responding.

6. Give my response to the bloggers actual presentation.

7. Consider and evaluate the bloggers evidence.

8. Make my response appropriately clear and brief.

9. Quote the bloggers words in a way which captures the essences of her post.

10. Helpfully identify that to which I reply.

11. Help my readers to understand what I am writing about by identifying the essay, the happening, the question, the experience, the philosophy to which I an responding.

12. Provide information about the writer, translator, editor, compiler, witness. 

13. Place my response and that which I am responding in historical context.

14. Provide some background for the main writer of the post.

15. Provide enough detail and example.

16. Make use of fair and useful quotes of the other blogger.

17. Make an estimate of the level of fact or truth of assertions I mention.

18. In making an argument provide convincing evidence.

19. Give the other blogger's evidence.

20. Evaluate how consistent the other blogger's evidence is with other sources l know.

                                                                                                       RCS

         

Writing Feedback Two

Write With RCS: This is a bit more about readers in writing groups. There is also info that can be of interest to other writers.

            Feedback can be the most important activity of your writing group. You can get precious feedback when members of your group read a given piece of your work in preparation for giving you the feedback you are looking for. You may want praise, but you benefit by knowing what your writing does to others.

            If you are now in a writing group you ought to soon have your turn as one of the readers providing valuable feedback. You may be an excellent reader and have read much as a writer learning your craft. However so, you will become a better reader  yet, as you read to provide feedback to your fellow writers.

            Use your reading skills to be a better provider of useful feedback.

Here is a miscellany of suggestions for becoming a reader better able to serve your writers:

~ Be willing to become more aware and more conscious.

~ Be willing to become a better perceiver .

~ Be willing to be even more honest than usual.

~ Note that as you perceive more consciously you perception becomes more accurate.

~ Be more attentive to your feelings as you read.

~ Be ready to tell the writer how you understood his writing.

~ Be ready to tell him how you perceive and experience his words.

~ Be ready to replay your experience of her writing as a kind of movie.

~ Remember that you are not a teacher here.

~ You are a reporter of experience, yours.

~ Remember that you are in a teacher-less writing group.

~ Be ready to give your writer a brief summary of what you think she has written. What does it add up to. 

~ What is its center of gravity? What sticks out. Tell us.

~ If you can, summarize this particular pies of writing in a single sentence. 

~ Choose  a word which most summarizes the piece. Choose a word from his writing. Choose a word not from his writing.

~ Don't plan or think too much about this first summary.

~ Tell the writer what happenings or doings she made stand out most at your first reading.

~ Tell her what you remember from last week's piece.

~ Simply tell the writer everything that happened to you as you carefully read her work. Tell how you felt as you read. Were you surprised? Happy? Tell if or when you began to like it.

~ Advice offering or giving is usually avoided. However, if your interaction with the writer indicates a real desire for advice and you feel you have good advice to offer, an exception may be made.

~ Be aware that this is not a story. Its about how you carry our your part in this section of your group.

~ Your feedback comes directly from your experience of the specific piece.

~ You might tell what specific voices are like at various points.

~ Describe what you think the writer's intentions were with this specific piece. Think of some crazy intention he might have had.

~ You might swallow it whole and give the result.

~ Just tell how you experienced work through imagination and feeling. 

                                                                                    rcs