Write Well in Less Time

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• Write Well in Less Time
• Joe Moxley
• Professor of English
• University of South Florida
• http//www.usf.edu/writing

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Workshop Goal

• Help you enjoy writing and achieve your writing
  goals in less time.

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A writer is not so much someone who has something
to say as he is someone who has found a process
that will bring about new things he would not
have thought of if he had not started to say
them --William Stafford
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Workshop Document Freewrite

• What attitudes and habits enable you to achieve
  your writing goals? In turn, what attitudes and
  habits interfere with your success as a writer?

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When first developing a project, model the
behavior of successful writers

• Play the believing game (as opposed to the
  doubting game). While composing, ignore negative
  thoughts (such as, I dont have enough time, this
  is a stupid idea, the professor will hate this).
  
• When the negative thoughts are crippling,
  critique them in double-entry format. Visualize
  success.

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Understand Composing Processes

• Different products involve different processes.
• Different personality styles have distinct
  composing patterns
• Understand your own strengths, weaknesses,
  proclivities as a writer

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Diagram of Composing Processes
Prewriting
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Wisely Manage Your Composing Processes

• Balance prewriting with writing and revising
• Do not edit early drafts
• Be flexible about how you write. For example,
  prewrite before researching organize after
  prewriting.

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Wisely Manage Your Composing Processes

• Stop writing at reasonable intervals.
• Timely stopping is more difficult and important
  than starting. Without the skill of stopping on
  time, writers cannot become productive workers
  who enjoy writing. Why? If they cannot break
  the momentum of busily, urgently doing things
  that hold them in a trance-like state, writers
  cannot begin (or end) writing sessions on time.
  And if they cannot stop writing when they have
  done enough for the day, before diminishing
  returns set in, they make writing aversive and
  more difficult to resume on the next scheduled
  occasion. (--Robert Boice)

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Wisely Manage Your Composing Processes

• Establish priorities and act accordingly.
• Structuring your time without being tense about
  it helps writers find additional time to work and
  play. And more. If you work with a sense of
  structured routine, with a present-orientation
  (cf dwelling on missed opportunities), with
  effective organization, and with persistence, you
  will be more likely to display higher
  self-esteem, better health, more optimism, and
  more efficient work habits. Without learning
  the language of time, you risk depression,
  psychological distress, anxiety, neuroticism, and
  physical symptoms of illness. Clearly, writers
  must learn to deal with time. (Robert Boice)

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3. Wisely Manage Your Composing Processes

• Log time spent researching and writing.
• I started keeping a more detailed chart which
  also showed how many pages I had written by the
  end of every working day. I am not sure why I
  started keeping such records. I suspect that it
  was because as a freelance writer entirely on my
  own, without employer or deadline, I wanted to
  create disciplines for myself, ones that were
  quilt-making when ignored. A chart on the wall
  served me as such a discipline, its figures
  scolding me or encouraging me. (Irving Wallace)

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Sample Log

• Keep a daily log of
• new words written
• class of writing (1, 2, or 3)
• description of activities
• description of goals (people to contact, revising
  goals, research goals)

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3. Wisely Manage Your Composing Processes

• Practice Patience.
• Avoid rushing, trying to do too much at one time,
  bingeing.
• Take deep breaths. Give your eyes a rest. Walk
  away from the computer every 30 minutes and
  stretch.
• Reserve your most energetic time of day, if
  possible, for writing.

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3. Wisely Manage Your Composing Processes
(Continued)

• Break documents into manageable sections.
• Establish due dates for first, second, and
  subsequent drafts.
• Write when you are sick and tired.
• When all else fails, freewrite about your process
  and establish reasonable contingencies.

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Practice Prewriting Strategies.

• Give Sufficient Time to Prewriting/Planning
• Freewrite
• Read/Research
• Discuss the matter w/peers mentors
• Construct an Outline or Issue Tree
• Dictate
• Complete a Document Planner

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Use a Document Planner

• Tentative Title/Subject Line ______________
• Establish a Reasonable Schedule
• Due date for conducting necessary background
  research
• Due date for networking with appropriate resource
  people
• Due date for writing first draft of document
  proposal
• Due date for receiving criticism from peers and
  supervisors
• Due date for writing second drafts of document
• What economic factors impinge on how this project
  will be developed or received?
• Final due date

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Use a Document Planner (Continued)

• Purpose Clearly define your purpose in as
  narrow of terms as possible.
• Audience Profile
• What do you know about your audience?
• What do you want your reader to do, understand,
  or feel? What does your reader know about your
  subject?
• What counterarguments or questions should you
  anticipate?
• Rhetorical Relationship What is your
  relationship to this audience? As a consequence,
  what voice/persona should you project?
• Boilerplate/Discourse Conventions What standard
  questions/issues are you expected to accommodate?

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Use a Document Planner (Continued)

• Persona/Voice
• Boilerplate/Discourse Conventions What
  methodologies/authorities/questions/issues are
  you expected to accommodate?

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Use a Document Planner (Continued)

• Status of Scholarship What important articles
  have been written about this topic? Where have
  these texts appeared? What new ideas can you
  contribute to this scholarly conversation?
  Briefly describe your informative or persuasive
  purpose.
• Methodology What procedures and methods will
  your audience find credible? What methodology
  seems appropriate to yourself, your subject, and
  your audience?
• Length and Format How long can your project be?
  What figures and tables or other formatting
  techniques are commonly used? What form of
  documentation is required (MLA? APA? The Chicago
  Manual of Style?)

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Enough prewriting! Get writing! Engage the
generative nature of language

• Freewrite Trust the generative process of
  writing. Keep perfectionist tendencies in check.
  (Remember Fluency precedes correctness)

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Enough prewriting!

• The positive force is the surprise of discovery.
  Writers are born at the moment they write what
  they do not expect. . . . They are hooked
  because the act of writing that, in the past, had
  revealed their ignorance, now reveals that they
  know more than they had thought they knew. --
  Donald Murray.

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Revise Your Work Play the Doubting Game

• Perceive revision to be a creative and inevitable
  process.
• Solicit critiques from your peers before
  submitting work and before conducting research.
  Once you submit a piece and have it rejected,
  learn from rejection.

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Revise Your Work Play the Doubting Game
6. Revise Your Work Play the Doubting Game

• Systematize how you revise documents.
• Provide the evidence, examples, and logical
  connections that readers need to follow your
  story

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7. Edit Documents for Results
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8. Learn from Critics, Rejection
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Dont Let Rejection Beat You

• Solicit as much criticism as possible. In a
  peculiar way, criticism looses its venom when
  taken in large dosages. And, of course, if you
  risk rejection on ten projects, sooner or later
  one of them will be accepted, thereby rescuing
  your pride!

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Dont Let Rejection Beat You

• Dont take criticism personally. Focus on the
  positive. Dont waste your energies writing to
  editors and telling them why they were fools to
  reject your ideas. Instead, place your energies
  into moving forward. Either immediately revise
  the manuscript or send it back out for
  consideration elsewhere.

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Dont Let Rejection Beat You

• Dont accept everything you hear. Ignore the
  cranks. Like bad drivers, there are too many
  cranks for you to police.
• Be your own worst critic. No one will take your
  work as seriously as you do.
• Dont try to critique your work at the last
  minute.

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Dont Let Rejection Beat You
Dont Let Rejection Beat You

• Be realistic. Remember its much easier to
  criticize than invent. Every manuscript can be
  critiqued, even ones authored by major scholars
  and researchers.

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Sample Publication Timeline

• Published without revisions as the lead article
  "Reinventing the Wheel or Teaching the Basics?
  College Writers' Knowledge of Argumentation."
  Composition Studies 212 (Fall 1993) 3-15.
• The Writing Instructor, University of Southern
  California/. Los Angeles, CA, August 17, 1991.
• Journal of Teaching Writing. Indiana University
  English Department, Indianapolis, Indiana, March
  26, 1990
• Research in the Teaching of English, State
  University of New York at Albany, Albany, New
  York, January 12, 1990
• College Composition and Communication, NCTE,
  Bowling Green, Ohio, November 6, 1989
• Journal of Teaching Writing, Indianapolis,
  Indiana, June 28, 1989
• College Composition and Communication, National
  Council of Teachers of English, Findlay, Ohio,
  August 2, 1988

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Sample Publication Timeline

• JAC, July 5, 1988
• Journal of Basic Writing, The City University of
  New York New York, New York, January 14, 1987
• Journal of Basic Writing, April 28, 1987
• Rhetoric Review, Southern Methodist
  UniversityDallas, Texas, February 10, 1986
• Research and Teaching in Developmental
  Education,Niagara University, New York, October
  31, 1986
• Written Communication, University of Texas,
  Austin, Texas, September 15, 1985
• College English, Indiana University, Bloomington,
  Indiana, February 26, 1985

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Workshop Document

• Draft a Document Planner