Alex Gilkerson
ENG 1510
9-20-12
Writing Constructs
The writing construct that I have been researching is the importance of a rough draft. I have found tons and tons of different sources that talk about different ways a rough draft is relevant to writing a good paper. One of the sources everyone will be most familiar with is, Anne Lamott. We read an article from this crazy lady and how she believes that everyone has a “shitty” first draft, or a couple of them. Anne explains that no one can sit down and write the best paper of their life. Everyone makes mistakes. She feels that in writing rough drafts you learn from your mistakes.
The author of “Keep your Rough Drafts Rough” in SparkCollege (couldn’t find the exact person), feels that you shouldn’t keep worrying about your grammar, spelling and punctuation. He/she feels that you will lose your ideas and not get the information you wanted out into your paper. They believe that you should write in short, quick increments. If you write freely for 15 minutes, you will get everything that you are thinking at the time, into the paper. After that 15 minute writing session, take a 5 minute break to recollect all your thoughts and to clear your mind. Maybe even eat a little snack and grab a drink. This author also believes that you must focus on the task at hand. Most of the time you are writing something that doesn’t interest you greatly, so stay on track. I feel any author or writer would feel this way too. Another helpful tip they give for typing rough drafts is to save your work every 5-10 minutes. I really agree with that, you could be typing and not realize your battery is about to die, or even your computer could crash. Many different things could happen unintentionally.
The next author I found was Joe Landsberger. Joe is responsible for the Studying Guides and Strategies website. He believes there are 7 stages to writing a paper. Believe it or not, a rough draft is number 5! Below are his 7 stages.
- Develop your topic
- Identify your audience
- Research
- Pre-write
- Draft/Write
- Revise
- Proofread
These are Joe Landsberger's 7 stages to writing a good paper. His views on the rough draft are that you need lots of time to think and write, a clear study room to where you can focus, have good preparation tools and research, and do a few pre-writing exercises. I feel Landsberger’s way is a lot more complex and organized then others, like Anne (the nut) Lamott’s. There are also a few things he doesn’t believe that belong in a rough draft. He feels no rough draft should include a title, quotes, or any type of editing. I will have to agree with him on this part. If it is a rough draft then there shouldn’t be any revisions. Not making revisions and then having a peer review with help your paper tremendously and will help you learn more to prevent from future mistakes.
An article I found that I think plays a role with rough drafts is by Joseph M. Williams. This article is in our Writing About Writing book and is called, The Phenomenology of Error. I feel it plays a role in my writing construct about rough drafts because the entire article is about errors. An interesting statement that he says is that people think if they don’t have any punctuation, grammar, or spelling errors, your paper is perfect. He compares this logic to a game of baseball. “Nobody thinks you know how to play baseball by just catching the ball, there is a lot more to the game”. This is very important to writing, you can have correct spelling and the whole 9 yards but maybe you didn’t frame it well or aren’t using the proper voice. Many things alter your paper from being perfect.
To many people, a rough draft is pointless, boring, and a waste of time. They think you should be able to write a paper one time, fix a few things and turn it in. I too believed all of those things before I started researching the topic. It’s not that easy though. There are many things that a rough draft will help you with. Not only fix your grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes but many other things. A rough draft or pre-writing assignment will prepare you for future papers. Maybe the mistake you made a lot in this paper, you won’t make it again in a different one. If you learn from that mistake, maybe during a peer review you will pick up that same error on someone else’s paper. So not only are you learning, you are helping someone else fix problems. It’s an ongoing process. The best way to get started on a paper is to find a topic, make an outline of strong facts you want to bring up, and just write. Just write non-stop for short increments of 15-20 minutes and take a small break of 5-7 minutes. This process will get all your ideas onto the paper. Once you do that, you’ll have a place to start. You will have processed new ideas you want to bring up and you can slid them into the right spot. As Anne Lamott says,”Everyone has a shitty first draft”. This is a very strong statement and expresses her views toward pre-writing tactics. This is reassuring to any young writer. It gives them a sense of comfort to know that even the best and most famous writers cannot write a good first draft like Stephen King or J.R. Tolkien. As a current young writer, I see where she is coming from with this logic. It is hard to do anything once and be good at it. The first time I shot a basketball I most likely wasn’t very good. As I have practiced more, I have gotten to have a pretty nice shot (at least I think so). There are thousands of pre-writing exercises but I feel the rough draft is most common and most effective, not only because you learn from your mistakes, but you can help others with the same mistake as well.
Learning from your mistakes is a big part of using a rough draft. Your peer’s or instructors will fix your errors and give you ideas of how to make it better. You can do two things with that. One, you can just fix it and move on. Or two, fix it and analyze it. You look at your mistakes, go over them, and actually understand why and what is wrong with them. That is the whole point of a rough draft in the first place. If you didn’t learn from your mistakes then you might as well just turn the paper in as is. The whole point is to actually take something out of the editing to use in the future. Like I said before, you might not help yourself, but you could help a fellow student.
Not very many, but some people believe a rough draft is a waste of time. They think you don’t gain anything from it. They think there is no other way to write a good paper than the first time they write it. Those people are vulgar thinkers. They believe one thing and stick to it no matter what. If you look at the facts, a rough draft absolutely helps in just about every way possibly. Once someone looks at it, they can give you more ideas about what to put into your paper. They can tell you if one paragraph should be taken out or moved to some where else. They can fix your spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. There is unlimited amounts of different tips people can give you to help with your writings. I am not saying to listen to everybody’s opinion, because no one is right all the time, but to be open minded and take someones constructive criticism. Not only will it help you with the paper soon to be due, but also any future papers you have coming up.
There have been many times when I should have used a rough draft or some kind of pre-writing assignment, but failed to use one. For my senior English class, we had a big paper due the first month. Since it was my senior year, and it was supposed to be easy and fun, I kind of put it off. We were supposed to get together with someone from the other English class every Tuesday and edit each others paper. Every Tuesday, it turned out to just be me editing my classmates paper. The due date finally came around and I did turn my paper in on time. It took two weeks for our teacher to grade all of our papers (we graduated 112 kids so that explains how big the papers were). I got my grade back and got a D on it. From then on, I had to work my ass off to get to an A. If I would’ve taking my paper serious and did the different rough drafts and pre-writing assignments, I wouldn’t have had such a hard time.
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