Josh Ritter, Editing as Writing, and The Death of Winter

The real reason for this post is that I want to play you a song.  Weighed down by the immobility of winter and stupefied from never-ending hibernation, I want to post a link to Josh Ritter’s cathartic vernal anthem “Snow is Gone” (“long time coming/but now, the snow is gone”) and move on with it.  This being an educational blog, I’ll proceed, however, using a Josh Ritter article on writing and editing as clever pretext.  Just play along…

All instructors can teach writing.  We may not all be grammarians, but most of us can recognize sound or unsound employments of structure, thesis statement, source evaluation, source citation, and evidentiary support.  The SPS writing-across-the-curriculum philosophy thus presses us all into duty for the cause of better writing. [FN1] 

If we each hold certain lines, it will be easier for our students to develop better habits along them.  We could debate what those habits should be, but perhaps the best umbrella habit for good writing, after the author has uncovered something  valuable to say, is a willingness to proofread vigilantly and edit mercilessly.

Peter Matthiessen, author of the indispensable The Snow Leopard, says that writing is a slog, until it isn’t.  It takes commitment and persistence to achieve eloquence:

“[I]t’s plain hard labor, hunting the right way to express that thought that had seemed so penetrating, even beautiful, before you had to reduce it into words. I liken the donkey work of the first draft to the booster apparatus of a rocket—the terrible labor of those energies lifting this reluctant mass against the force of gravity, slowly, slowly, until marvelously—on the better days—the thing achieves its own momentum, and the dead weight of its booster falls away. Effortless, it enters into orbit—in short, ‘the zone’—sailing free and clear and light and sun-filled, opened wide to the flow of imagination, unobstructed.”

True, I do not expect the business law case studies I grade to be rocket-like in their elegance, but I do expect that the student has spent some time with the paper, organizing thoughts, getting them down, and then editing them into a neat, coherent, flowing whole.  A first draft of decent ideas handed in as a final product offends assertively, like stinky cheese left oozing in the sun.  It is something good, mishandled.

In some cases, the unedited piece results from lack of care or laziness.  Josh Ritter, singer-song writer extraordinaire, wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal which highlighted the emotional/defensive mechanisms which, too, can create editing aversion.  [FN2] He tamed his own youthful distaste for editing with this realization:

“Doing good work and having creative thoughts means very little unless you're able to express that work and those thoughts to others in as straightforward a way as possible. To edit yourself isn't an admission of lack of talent; it's sticking up for that talent by taking the time to make sure that everyone can understand what you're trying to say.”

After the exhausting “donkey work” of the first draft, the surgical work of fixing it can lack enticement.  Our students need to be motivated to take that next step.  

Course by course, assignment by assignment, we each can encourage students to revise, edit, and proofread.   We can emphasize that taking these latter-stage steps demonstrates pride in the work to which their name is attached, making the writing clearer, tighter, more economical and precise, easier to comprehend, and better structured.  Then, we must hold them accountable for those very things, primarily through our feedback and grading process. 

 

When grading writing and providing useful feedback about it, perhaps we can use the framework below as guidance:

We can tell if they revised by evaluating the structure, organization, quality of analysis, relevance of evidence cited, and general content management (these are the big picture items).  

We can tell if they edited by evaluating the style, flow, economy of language, and sentence structure (this is where we look at the means of communication used).

We can tell if they proofread by evaluating the cleanness of the submission (this is where we look for errors in spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure).

If, together, we are going to make Centenary students better writers, we each must help our students understand the maxim Mr. Ritter extols in his article:  to write is to edit.

Here is a link to the Josh Ritter article:  Seeing Red:  To Write Is To Edit

Here is a link to an Oxford Guide on the subject:  Guide to Editing and Proofing

Most importantly:  Winter is gone; play the song loudly.

[FN1] Notice that APA citation is part of the puzzle, not all of it.  We want our students to cite consistently and clearly, but that is not the end game of our assessment of their writing.  This is another blog entry for another time.

[FN2] I saw Josh Ritter play at Monmouth University last fall.  At one point, he engaged a somewhat quiet crowd by unplugging his guitar, perching on the lip of the stage, and playing a full-hearted version of the song above.  He did not play to the mood; it being his room, he grabbed the audience by the collar and brought them into his joy by means of his passion.  Teaching lessons abounded.  That too is another blog entry for another time, though.