Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Stay Positive: The Writing Process

I haven't done a "Stay Positive" post in ages. So here goes. I got three 'graphs to drop on you.

My daughter was telling me today about how she's required to revise her writing because she said she had written a rough draft of something, but she was trying to remember the name of the word of what's she's supposed to do after the rough draft. I correctly guessed the word was "revision." Since I do some volunteer tutoring on Thursday afternoons every week, I've noticed that her second-grade teacher puts her students into pairs, and they workshop drafts. As you can imagine, I'm hoping my son gets this teacher when he hits second grade.

My daughter was also telling me today about the story she's writing in her journal. She's very proud she's on page six of the tale. From what I'm told, here's the deal. It's about a princess who loves her dog so much that one day when she gives the dog a kiss, the dog mysteriously disappears. After some investigation, the princess finds out that three boys used some manner of magic to make her dog disappear. They're holding it for ransom. The band of culprits are named Bob, Quinn, and Tim. That dastardly trio then tells her that she can get her dog back if she goes into a creepy cave, which has a dragon living in it. But it's a "friendly dragon who's just lonely." So then the princess and the dragon go to Florida, and then it snows there. Then they travel to New Mexico, and it "rains ice." I think she was just brainstorming about the Florida and New Mexico trips, but I'm curious to read this story when it's finished. Her journal is twelve pages, and she's halfway there.

I travel to a conference next week to do a research presentation. So this morning I shut the door to my office and sequestered myself to write a draft. From 8:30 to approximately 10:30, I churned out what Anne Lamott would probably call a "shitty first draft," and it felt good. I've had ideas bouncing around in my head about this topic for a while, and like always, I discovered ideas and points through the process of writing.

3 comments:

Sandy Longhorn said...

I love this post. Perhaps the daughter will allow you to scan a page of her story and share it with us.

I love Bird br Bird and use it in class a lot. Glad to know the shitty first draft didn't let you down. Good luck in revision.

Quintilian B. Nasty said...

I'm also going to take Quintilian's advice (the Roman rhetorician, not me) about letting the document rest a good while, so I have a fresh set of eyes to revise with.

Quintilian B. Nasty said...

Here's the exact statement I was thinking of from Book X, Chapter IV of Institutes of Oratory: "Undoubtedly, also, the best method for correction is to lay by for a time what we have written, so that we may return to it, after an interval, as it it were something new to us, and written by another, lest our writings, like newborn infants, compel us to fix our affections on them."

Or as Hemingway said, "The first draft of anything is shit."