This week I want you to continue to think about process and how you can use Kaizen, process theory, and process writing in your own lives. You are also going to begin learning the value of incorporating others into your writing process AND of helping others in their writing process.
Here are your reading and writing tasks for the week:
1) Each chapter of the text has spoken of the writing process. Review the reading to date. As you do, take time to update your writing inventory with the information on process writing you find in the chapters we've read. When updating, feel free to use summary (see text), paraphrase (see the text), and direct quotations, but remember to take the time to note from which page or pages you are taking the material. Noting where you get your material is an essential aspect of good research (and academic writing).
2) Review my posts on Kaizen and the writing process, and write a response for your personal blog to these posts. Only write one or two responses for all these posts on process. Please don't try to write one response for each post. Since there's so much material, I suspect these blog responses will be longish.
Get in the habit of reading the class blog on a regular basis. Just as you write a response to the reading from the text for your blog, you should write a weekly response to the material covered in the class blog. You should also incorporate content from the class blog into your writing inventory. Again, feel free to quote, paraphrase, and summarize what I say; again, note from which posts you're taking your material.
In my posts for this blog, I try to provide a summary of essentil terms. I post assignments and class announcements. I supliment the text. For instance, the review stage is essential to becoming a good writer, but the text doesn't discuss it much; and, the text doesn't talk much at all about how to become a better writer. Also, I use the posts to provide some insight into the big picture, talk about writing, community and society, and about how writers work. Finally, I provide links to online tools and articles which you can use in your writing.
As part of your learning for the class, I assume you're reading the blog and using this reading much as you would lecture notes in a regular class. When I look at your writing inventories and your blog, I expect your responses to reflect the reading and reflection on content from the blog.
3) This week, read at least two of your classmate's blogs, and post comments on their entries. These comments might supplement what is being said, or they might ask questions. Here, you are helping your classmates write the best blogs they can; and, you are beginning to practice revision and editing skills.
4) If you haven't already, begin visiting and reading your classmate's writing inventory documents. By this point, you should have used the list of the class mate's email addresses--it's the list at the top of the Class List--to add everyone in the class as a collaborator to your writing inventory. If you haven't' taken this step, do so. If you're having difficulty with this step, stop by my office or write.
Each week for the remainder of the semester, pick three or four inventories to read. You can get to them via the file management page of google documents. Try not to read the same ones, that is, unless you find one particularly insightful. Again, feel free to quote, summarized and paraphrase any material you find useful, and again, make sure to note the person and the blog from whom you're taking your material.
As you read the blogs, take the time to make useful suggestions as to ways the author you're reading might improve their response to an outcome. Make your responses in a different text color, and make sure to sign your comments. Again, you're practicing helping one another edit and revise. You might note that the outcomes speak of finding out "appropriate ways to incorporate others" into your writing process. Discussing a text with others who are knowledgeable about your topic is one useful skill you should pick up from this course. Too often, folks think talking with someone else about their writing, getting help with revision, and getting help with editing is akin to cheating.
You do cheat if you let someone else do your work for you. There is something essentially wrong about Ghost Writers and representing the work of others as your own. However, your main work--in this class and in life--is to learn and communicate. It's almost impossible to do either well without repetition, practice, and, most important, discussion. It's especially easy in online discussion to let yourself get isolated from everyone but yourself; and, you miss out on the inter-social aspects of learning and successful communication.
Getting others to read, comment on, suggest revisions, and help edit are some of the ways every professional writer works. It creates a win-win relationship, both the editer and the person whose work is being edited learn more and produce better writing than they would otherwise. For instance, my wife, Nancy, is an integral aspect of my own writing process. She reads and we discuss much of what I write, and my writing (and our relationship) are better for it. The upshot? Get over the notion that writers work in sublime solitude. There are aspects of the writing process which take place in isolation, but without the help of others, you writing will be less successful than it could be.
5) Finally, begin drafting a process paper. The process genre is a sub-genre of "how to" writing. In a process paper you describe a process and its outcomes, and you describe the steps involved in the process. Recipes are a form of the process genre, so are directions on how to change the oil in your car.
In the blog post you are *drafting* this week, I want you to describe a process you use in a hobby or in your work. Assume your audience isn't familiar with your topic, and provide enough detail so they gain a fairly through knowledge of the process you describe, its intended outcomes, and the steps involved. Try to pick a process to describe which others may find interesting or useful.
My own goal for this assignment is to get you to write in a public genre (unlike the work you've been doing on responding to reading and taking notes, whose primary audiences is your self). I also want you to learn the value of learning to think in terms of process, not product, and one way to do this is to apply such thought to your own life.
As part of your description, I want you to identify one small but high impact change you can make in the process you describe. What you're working toward is applying one round of the Kaizen process your process.
As always, write with comments and questions.
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