Chocolate War

I like how Lamott formatted the information in a story like way. She used real life examples to demonstrate the writing techniques she believes in. This type of format made for an easy read and made it easier for me to pay attention to details, basically because it was a little more engaging for me. She reminds me of Peter Elbow though, when she described how you must just write and write and write.

One thing that she touched on quite about with her own teaching experience is how some of her students wanted to write to be published and how some of her students wanted to write to write. I’ve never been one of those people who writes in hopes that everyone will read it and maybe that one day I will become a famous. I that by making a point to speak on this, Lamott is pointing out that the best writing and most relatable writing are the compositions done for the sake of pouring your ideas out on paper. When she said this, it reminded me of those novels that are written by famous writers that have the same plots or same types of families in which there is a new addition every month. They use the same descriptive words and the same techniques with different names and a modified tragedy. I’m not saying that these writers are in no one way shape or form not great writers but that maybe, they’ve gotten caught up in idea that they must be published. On the contrary to this notion though, the reason they are famous is because people continuously buy their books and read them and fall in love the characters and tragedies that are depicted in the writing. So I guess that maybe Lamott’s point is valid and invalid depending upon the type of writer who is reading her words of wisdom.

I think that I am more a process theorist than a product theorist. When we were in class reviewing our writing philosophies, I was a bit taken back at all the "traditional" writing people had done. It seems to be that all my English teachers (Language Arts is what it was called when I was in school) focused the most on process writing.

I remember that in middle school my seventh grade Language Arts teacher would have us write stories and poems about the topics we were discussing in class and that made finding a topic easy. For instance, when we were reading literature about WWII we had to write poems in relation to the characters in the book or feelings of the characters discussed in class. We were never limited to how long or short or how creative we could be. One time a classmate of mine wrote a poem, and it was tear jerker, and then stained it with tea so it would look old and burned the edges an counted it as part of her final project. The teacher liked it so much she went home, wrote a poem, used the same aging effect and shared her writing with the class. That's the one thing that I really like about this article. It has an emphasis on student participation throughout the whole writing process, but it also informs how important it is for the instructor to write and give students ideas from their own compositions. I feel that if a teacher shares their own example, it motivates students to become interested in the topic, but also sets an example of what students should keep in mind as they are compiling their own works.

I think too that Tcudi touched on the importance of learning writing techniques through reading. I feel as though it would be an almost natural idea that if you want to learn how to write read someone else's writing, especially writing that has been done by professionals who have learned about the writing process. Books can serve as a secondary instructor. An instructor can even pick out specific books or parts of literatures to serve as examples of specific writing techniques that are discussed in class.

I love the idea of a writing class where students get to write. I took a creative writing class and was overall satisfied with it, but I was disappointed because I thought that I would be able to just write in class, and write about what I wanted. Instead, we had writing assignments that focused on different genres throughout the semester and those assignments were critiqued by our classmates.

I didn't mind that my writing was being critiqued by my peers, but sometimes it was really difficult for me not to become offended by the comments that were made. Not to mention there was that one girl who had something annoying to about everyone's work because she just didn't understand or she just didn't like the word order in the third stanza of a poem. It was okay for her to pick apart everyone's hard work, but when people had suggestions for her that was a different story. I think it is important for students to read eachothers work because it allows them to practice the various steps of the writing process and because they are exposed to different writing styles. However, I think that with peer editing, there needs to be strict guidelines on how to peer edit. For instance: no "you" commments ("you" need to do this or "you" need to do that); no "I don't understand" (instead of "I don't understand" one can use, "It's not very clear when...."). Also, the student who is having their work reviewed should not be able to defend themselves. Instead, they should be recording all the ideas that are being expressed on their own draft to later make changes. If someone is busy defending their ideas, they loose track of the comments that could potentially help make their writing more clear and concise.