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.
