Episode #5 (Alliteration/Breakthrough)

Whether it is in composition, creative writing, or literature, we often want our students to step back from their writing and view it with a critical eye, to effectively see what is working and not working in a given piece.   This episode is where I really took that critical stance.  Although I loved the way the alliteration sounded throughout the text, as I critic I felt it to be too forced or heavy-handed and not particularly reflective of how the speaker of the poem might talk.  I did, however, traverse back and forth between the role of a poet and the role of a critic, noting that the use of alliterative language was one of my many “tics” as a poet and that I could certainly change how I was using the language later on. 

Episode #6 (A Complete Draft)

After taking a moment to re-read over the poem again and comment on what still needed to be done, I realized that this whole process was what Eve Shelnutt described as “transforming experience,” or talking about my thoughts and feelings as I wrote in order to help make connections between my cognitive processes, my personal experiences, and the eventual creation of a complete draft (156 – 157).  I felt very excited (and almost relieved) that in the span of 30 minutes, from the prewriting phase to the complete draft, I was able to create something that had some semblance of form and meaning behind it.  Also, I used this time to make some minor line edits pertaining to punctuation and the enjambment of the lines.

Episode #7 (Revision)

I returned to the poem a day later, refreshed and hoping to refine the work a little more.  True to how Donald Murray describes it, this revision or rewriting phase consisted of “rethinking, redesigning, rewriting – and finally, line-by-line editing” (4).  To help facilitate the process, I turned on the comment function in Microsoft Word and made brief margin notes to myself, mainly in relation to issues regarding word choice.  Though not a final product, the few lines I crafted could be considered a strong start to a longer piece and certainly could be brought into a classroom, workshop, or conference setting  (via online or face-to-face) to help foster discussion on process, literary devices, audience awareness, genre, etc. 

Episode #8 (Final Thoughts)

In the exciting conclusion to my “De-mystifying the Writing Process” episodes, I attempt to explore some of the theoretical and pedagogical connections between creative writing, composition, technology, and writing spaces.  Although I realize that my main theoretical lens for this experiment (process pedagogy, cognitive theory, and expressivism) are somewhat dated, the use of technology gives us an opportunity to resurrect, reinvent, and perhaps utilize them in a new and exciting way; consequently, more contemporary theories such as social epistemic, critical, and post-process theory are also discussed.  Ultimately, however, the idea is to move theory into practice (see multimodality and online communication).  As with the introductory video, you can view the video on YouTube by clicking the screenshot above, or by clicking here.