4 pressures and 8 signals

8/3/2019 4 Pressures and 8 Signals

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Write before WritingAuthor(s): Donald M. MurraySource: College Composition and Communication, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Dec., 1978), pp. 375-381Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/357024Accessed: 06/09/2008 23:39

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'Write Before Writing

DONALD M. MURRAY

WE COMMAND our students to write andgrow frustrated when our "bad" studentshesitate, stare out the window, dawdleover blank paper, give up and say, "Ican't write," while the "good" studentssmugly pass their papers in before theend of the period.

When publishing writers visit such

classrooms, however, they are aston-ished at students who can write on com-mand, ejaculating correct little essayswithout thought, for writers have towrite before writing.

The writers were the students whodawdled, stared out windows, and, moreoften than we like to admit, didn't dowell in English-or in school.

One reason may be that few teachershave ever allowed adequate time for

prewriting, that essential stage in thewriting process which precedes a com-pleted first draft. And even the curriculaplans and textbooks which attempt todeal with prewriting usually pass overit rather quickly, referring only to thetechniques of outlining, note-taking, orjournal-making, not revealing the com-plicated process writers work through toget to the first draft.

Writing teachers, however, shouldgive careful attention to what happensbetween the moment the writer receivesan idea or an assignment and the mo-ment the first completed draft is begun.We need to understand, as well as wecan, the complicated and intertwiningprocesses of perception and conceptionthrough language.

In actual practice, of course, thesestages overlap and interact with one an-other, but to understand what goes onwe must separate them and look at them

artificially, the way we break down anyskill to study it.

First of all, we must get out of thestands where we observe the process ofwriting from a distance-and after thefact-and get on the field where we canunderstand the pressures under whichthe writer operates. On the field, we will

discover there is one principal negativeforce which keeps the writer from writ-ing and four positive forces which helpthe writer move forward to a completeddraft.

Resistance to WritingThe negative force is resistance to writ-

ing, one of the great natural forces ofnature. It may be called The Law of De-lay: that writing which can be delayed,will be. Teachers and writers too oftenconsider resistance to writing evil, when,in fact, it is necessary.

When I get an idea for a poem or anarticle or a talk or a short story, I feelmyself consciously draw away from it.I seek procrastination and delay. Theremust be time for the seed of the idea tobe nurtured in the mind. Far better writ-ers than I have felt the same way. Overhis writing desk Franz Kafka had oneword, "Wait." William Wordsworthtalked of the writer's "wise passiveness."Naturalist Annie Dillard recently said,"I'm waiting. I usually get my ideas inNovember, and I start writing in Janu-ary. I'm waiting." Denise Levertov says,"If . . . somewhere in the vicinity thereis a poem then, no, I don't do anythingabout it, I wait."

Even the most productive writers areexpert dawdlers, doers of unnecessaryerrands, seekers of interruptions-trials

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COLLEGE COMPOSITION AND COMMUNICATION

to their wives or husbands, friends, as-sociates, and themselves. They sharpenwell-pointed pencils and go out to buymore blank paper, rearrange offices,wander through libraries and bookstores,chop wood, walk, drive, make unneces-sary calls, nap, daydream, and try not"consciously" to think about what theyare going to write so they can think sub-consciously about it.

Writers fear this delay, for they canname colleagues who have made a ca-reer of delay, whose great unwrittenbooks will never be written, but, some-how, those writers who write must havethe faith to sustain themselves throughthe necessity of delay.

Forces for WritingIn addition to that faith, writers feel

four pressures that move them forwardtowards the first draft.

The first is increasing informationabout the subject. Once a writer decideson a subject or accepts an assignment,information about the

subjectseems to

attach itself to the writer. The writer'sperception apparatus finds significancein what the writer observes or overhearsor reads or thinks or remembers. Thewriter becomes a magnet for specific de-tails, insights, anecdotes, statistics, con-necting thoughts, references. The sub-ject itself seems to take hold of the writ-er's experience, turning everything thathappens to the writer into material. And

this inventory of information createspressure that moves the writer forwardtowards the first draft.

Usually the writer feels an increasingconcern for the subject. The more awriter knows about the subject, themore the writer begins to feel about thesubject. The writer cares that the sub-ject be ordered and shared. The concern,which at first is a vague interest in thewriter's mind, often becomes an obses-

sion until it is communicated. WinstonChurchill said, "Writing a book was anadventure. To begin with, it was a toy,

and amusement; then it became a mis-stress, and then a master. And then atyrant."

The writer becomes aware of a wait-ing audience, potential readers whowant or need to know what the writerhas to say. Writing is an act of arro-gance and communication. The writerrarely writes just for himself or herself,but for others who may be informed, en-tertained, or persuaded by what thewriter has to say.

And perhaps most important of all, isthe approaching deadline, which movescloser

dayby day at a

terrifyingand ac-

celerating rate. Few writers publish with-out deadlines, which are imposed byothers or by themselves. The deadline isreal, absolute, stern, and commanding.

Rehearsal for WritingWhat the writer does under the pres-

sure not to write and the four counter-vailing pressures to write is best de-scribed by the word rehearsal, which Ifirst heard used

byDr. Donald Graves

of the University of New Hampshire todescribe what he saw young childrendoing as they began to write. He watchedthem draw what they would write andheard them, as we all have, speakingaloud what they might say on the pagebefore they wrote. If you walk througheditorial offices or a newspaper city-room you will see lips moving and hearexpert professionals muttering and whis-

pering to themselves as they write. Re-hearsal is a normal part of the writingprocess, but it took a trained observer,such as Dr. Graves, to identify its sig-nificance.

Rehearsal covers much more than themuttering of struggling writers. As Dr.Graves points out, productive writersare "in a state of rehearsal all the time."Rehearsal usually begins with an unwrit-ten dialogue within the writer's mind.

"All of a sudden I discover what I havebeen thinking about a play," says Ed-ward Albee. "This is usually between six

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WRITE BEFORE WRITING

months and a year before I actually sitdown and begin typing it out." Thewriter thinks about characters or argu-ments, about plot or structure, aboutwords and lines. The writer usually hearssomething which is similar to whatWallace Stevens must have heard as hewalked through his insurance officeworking out poems in his head.

What the writer hears in his or herhead usually evolves into note-taking.This may be simple brainstorming, thejotting down of random bits of informa-tion which may connect themselves intoa

patternlater on, or it

maybe

journal-writing, a written dialogue between thewriter and the subject. It may even be-come research recorded in a formalstructure of note-taking.

Sometimes the writer not only talks tohimself or herself, but to others-collab-orators, editors, teachers, friends-work-ing out the piece of writing in oral lan-guage with someone else who can enterinto the process of discovery with thewriter.

For most writers, the informal notesturn into lists, outlines, titles, leads, or-dered fragments, all sketches of whatlater may be written, devices to catch apossible order that exists in the chaos ofthe subject.

In the final stage of rehearsal, the writ-er produces test drafts, written or un-written. Sometimes they are called dis-covery drafts or trial runs or false starts

that the writer doesn't think will befalse. All writing is experimental, andthe writer must come to the point wheredrafts are attempted in the writer's headand on paper.

Some writers seem to work more intheir head, and others more on paper.Susan Sowars, a researcher at the Uni-versity of New Hampshire, examiningthe writing processes of a group of grad-uate students found

a division . . . between those who makemost discoveries during prewriting and

those who make most discoveries dur-ing writing and revision. The discov-eries include the whole range from in-sights into personal issues to task-re-

lated organizational and content in-sight. The earlier the stage at whichinsights occur, the greater the drudgeryassociated with the writing-rewritingtasks. It may be that we resemble theyoung reflective and reactive writers.The less developmentally mature reac-tive writers enjoy writing more thanreflective writers. They may use writingas a rehearsal for thinking just asyoung, reactive writers draw to re-hearse writing. The younger and older

reflective writers do not need to re-hearse by drawing to write or by writ-ing to think clearly or to discover newrelationships and significant content.

This concept deserves more investiga-tion. We need to know about both thereflective and reactive prewriting mode.We need to see if there are developmen-tal changes in students, if they movefrom one mode to another as they ma-ture, and we need to see if one mode ismore important in certain writing tasksthan others. We must, in every way pos-sible, explore the significant writingstage of rehearsal which has rarely beendescribed in the literature on the writ-ing process.

The Signals Which Say "Write"During the rehearsal process, the ex-

perienced writer sees signals which tell

the writer how to control the subjectand produce a working first draft. Thewriter, Rebecca Rule, points out that insome cases when the subject is found,the way to deal with it is inherent in thesubject. The subject itself is the signal.Most writers have experienced thisquick passing through of the prewritingprocess. The line is given and the poemis clear; a character gets up and walksthe writer through the story; the news-

paperman attends a press conference,hears a quote, sees the lead and the en-tire structure of the article instantly.

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But many times the process is far lessclear. The writer is assigned a subject orchooses one and then is lost.

E. B. White testifies, "I never knew inthe morning how the day was going todevelop. I was like a hunter, hoping tocatch sight of a rabbit." Denise Lever-tov says, "You can smell the poem be-fore you see it." Most writers know thesefeelings, but students who have neverseen a rabbit dart across their writingdesks or smelled a poem need to knowthe signals which tell them that a pieceof writing is near.

What does the writerrecognize

whichgives a sense of closure, a way of han-dling a diffuse and overwhelming sub-ject? There seem to be eight principalsignals to which writers respond.

One signal is genre. Most writers viewthe world as a fiction writer, a reporter,a poet, or an historian. The writer seesexperience as a plot or a lyric poem ora news story or a chronicle. The writeruses such literary traditions to see andunderstand

life."Ideas come to a writer because hehas trained his mind to seek them out,"says Brian Garfield. "Thus when he ob-serves or reads or is exposed to a charac-ter or event, his mind sees the story pos-sibilities in it and he begins to composea dramatic structure in his mind. Thisprocess is incessant. Now and then itleads to something that will become anovel. But it's mainly an attitude: a way

of looking at things; a habit of exam-ining everything one perceives as poten-tial material for a story."

Genre is a powerful but dangerouslens. It both clarifies and limits. Thewriter and the student must be carefulnot to see life merely in the stereotypeform with which he or she is most fa-miliar but to look at life with all of thepossibilities of the genre in mind and toattempt to look at life through different

genre.Another signal the writer looks for isa point of view. This can be an opinion

towards the subject or a position fromwhich the writer-and the reader-studies the subject.

A tenement fire could inspire the writ-er to speak out against tenements, dan-gerous space-heating systems, a fire-de-partment budget cut. The fire mightalso be seen from the point of view ofthe people who were the victims or whoescaped or who came home to find theirhome gone. It may be told from thepoint of view of a fireman, an arsonist,an insurance investigator, a fire-safetyengineer, a real-estate planner, a hous-

ing inspector,a landlord, a

spectator,as

well as the victim. The list could go on.Still another way the writer sees the

subject is through voice. As the writerrehearses, in the writer's head and onpaper, the writer listens to the sound ofthe language as a clue to the meaning inthe subject and the writer's attitudetoward that meaning. Voice is often theforce which drives a piece of writingforward, which illuminates the subject

for the writer and the reader.A writer may, for example, start towrite a test draft with detached uncon-cern and find that the language appear-ing on the page reveals anger or pas-sionate concern. The writer who startsto write a solemn report of a meetingmay hear a smile and then a laugh in hisown words and go on to produce a hu-morous column.

News is an important signal for many

writers who ask what the reader needsto know or would like to know. Thoseprolific authors of nature books, Lorusand Margery Milne, organize their booksand each chapter in the books aroundwhat is new in the field. Between as-signment and draft they are constantlylooking for the latest news they can passalong to their readers. When they findwhat is new, then they know how to or-ganize their writing.

Writers constantly wait for the linewhich is given. For most writers, thereis an enormous difference between a

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thesis or an idea or a concept and an ac-tual line, for the line itself has reso-nance. A single line can imply a voice,a tone, a pace, a whole way of treatinga subject. Joseph Heller tells about thesignal which produced his novel Some-thing Happened:

I begin with a first sentence that isindependent of any conscious prepara-tion. Most often nothing comes out ofit: a sentence will come to mind thatdoesn't lead to a second sentence.Sometimes it will lead to thirty sen-tences which then come to a dead end.I was alone on the deck. As I sat thereworrying and wondering what to do,one of those first lines suddenly cameto mind: "In the office in which I work,there are four people of whom I amafraid. Each of these four people isafraid of five people." Immediately, helines presented a whole explosion ofpossibilities and choices-characters(working in a corporation) a tone, amood of anxiety, or of insecurity. Inthat first hour (before someone camealong and asked me to go to the beach)I knew the beginning, the ending, mostof the middle, the whole scene of thatparticular "something" hat was goingto happen; I knew about the brain-damaged child, and especially, ofcourse, about Bob Slocum, my protag-onist, and what frightened him, that hewanted to be liked, that his immediatehope was to be allowed to make athree-minute speech at the companyconvention. Many of the actual linesthroughout the book came to me-theentire "something happened" scenewith those solar plexus lines (begin-ning with the doctor's statement andending with "Don't tell my wife" andthe rest of them) all coming to me inthat first hour on that Fire Island deck.Eventually I found a different openingchapter with a different first line ("Iget the willies when I see closeddoors") but I kept the original, whichhad spurred everything, to start off thesecond section.

Newspapermen are able to writequickly and effectively under pressure

because they become skillful at identi-fying a lead, that first line-or two orthree-which will inform and entice thereader and which, of course, also givesthe writer control over the subject. Asan editorial writer, I found that findingthe title first gave me control over thesubject. Each title became, in effect, apre-draft, so that in listing potential ti-tles I would come to one which wouldbe a signal as to how the whole editorialcould be written.

Poets and fiction writers often receivetheir signals in terms of an image. Some-times this image is static; other times itis a moving picture in the writer's mind.When Gabriel Garcia Marquez wasasked what the starting point of his nov-els was, he answered, "A completelyvisual image . . . the starting point ofLeaf Storm is an old man taking hisgrandson to a funeral, in No One Writesto the Colonel, it's an old man waiting,and in One Hundred Years, an old mantaking his grandson to the fair to findout what ice is." William Faulkner wasquoted as saying, "It begins with a char-acter, usually, and once he stands up onhis feet and begins to move, all I do istrot along behind him with a paper andpencil trying to keep up long enough toput down what he says and does." It's acomment which seems facetious-if you'renot a fiction writer. Joyce Carol Oatesadds, "I visualize the characters com-pletely; I have heard their dialogue, I

know how they speak, what they want,who they are, nearly everything aboutthem."

Although image has been testified tomostly by imaginative writers, where itis obviously most appropriate, I thinkresearch would show that nonfictionwriters often see an image as the signal.The person, for example, writing amemo about a manufacturing proceduremay see the assembly line in his or her

mind. The politician arguing for a pen-sion law may see a person robbed of apension, and by seeing that person

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know how to organize a speech or thedraft of a new law.

Many writers know they are ready towrite when they see a pattern in a sub-ject. This pattern is usually quite differ-ent from what we think of as an outline,which is linear and goes from beginningto end. Usually the writer sees some-thing which might be called a gestalt,which is, in the words of the dictionary,"a unified physical, psychological, orsymbolic configuration having propertiesthat cannot be derived from its parts."The writer usually in a moment sees theentire

pieceof

writingas a

shape,a

form, something that is more than all ofits parts, something that is entire andis represented in his or her mind, andprobably on paper, by a shape.

Marge Piercy says, "I think that thebeginning of fiction, of the story, has todo with the perception of pattern inevent." Leonard Gardner, in talking ofhis fine novel Fat City, said, "I had adefinite design in mind. I had a sense ofcircle ... of

closingthe circle at the

end." John Updike says, "I really beginwith some kind of solid, coherent image,some notion of the shape of the bookand even of its texture. The PoorhouseFair was meant to have a sort of wideshape. Rabbit, Run was kind of zigzag.The Centaur was sort of a sandwich."

We have interviews with imaginativewriters about the writing process, butrarely interviews with science writers,

business writers, political writers, jour-nalists, ghost writers, legal writers, med-ical writers-examples of effective writ-ers who use language to inform andpersuade. I am convinced that such re-search would reveal that they also seepatterns or gestalts which carry themfrom idea to draft.

"It's not the answer that enlightensbut the question," says Ionesco. This in-sight into what the writer is looking for

is one of the most significant considera-tions in trying to understand the free-writing process. A most significant book

based on more than ten years of study ofart students, The Creative Vision, ALongitudinal Study of Problem-Findingin Art, by Jacob W. Getzels and MihalyCsikszentmihalyi, has documented howthe most creative students are those whocome up with the problem to be solvedrather than a quick answer. The signalto the creative person may well be theproblem, which will be solved throughthe writing.

We need to take all the concepts ofinvention from classical rhetoric andcombine them with what we know frommodern

psychology,from studies of cre-

ativity, from writers' testimony aboutthe prewriting process. Most of all, weneed to observe successful students andwriters during the prewriting process,and to debrief them to find out whatthey do when they move effectively fromassignment or idea to completed firstdraft. Most of all, we need to move fromfailure-centered research to researchwhich defines what happens when the

writing goes well, justwhat is the

pro-cess followed by effective student andprofessional writers. We know far toolittle about the writing process.

Implications for Teaching WritingOur speculations make it clear that

there are significant implications for theteaching of writing in a close examina-tion of what happens between receiv-ing an assignment or finding a subject

and beginning a completed first draft.We may need, for example, to recon-sider our attitude towards those who de-lay writing. We may, in fact, need toforce many of our glib, hair-trigger stu-dent writers to slow down, to daydream,to waste time, but not to avoid a reason-able deadline.

We certainly should allow time withinthe curriculum for prewriting, and weshould work with our students to helpthem understand the process of rehear-sal, to allow them the experience of re-hearsing what they will write in their

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minds, on the paper, and with collabo-rators.

We should also make our students fa-miliar with the

signals they maysee dur-

ing the rehearsal process which will tellthem that they are ready to write, thatthey have a way of dealing with theirsubject.

The prewriting process is largely in-visible; it takes place within the writer'shead or on scraps of paper that are rare-

ly published. But we must understandthat such a process takes place, that it issignificant, and that it can be madeclear to our students. Students who arenot writing, or not writing well, mayhave a second chance if they are able toexperience the writers' counsel to writebefore writing.

University of New HampshireDurham

Resolutions nd N\ominationsJeriel Howard, 1979 Chair of the CCCC Committee on Resolutions, hereby issuesa call for resolutions to be considered for presentation at the meeting in Minneapolis.Proposed resolutions require the signatures of at least five Conference members andshould be mailed, by March 21, 1979, to Jeriel Howard, Department of English,Bishop College, Dallas, TX 75241.

Nominations for the Assistant Chair, Secretary, and several positions on the CCCCExecutive Committee should be sent to the 1979 Chair of the Nominations Com-mittee, Marianna Davis, Division of

English,Benedict

College, Columbia,SC 29204

at least a week before the dates of the Minneapolis meeting, April 4-7.

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4 pressures and 8 signals

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