I’ve been working my way through Laurence Sterne’s wonderfully comic novel about writing a novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman , and recently came upon the following passage (from Volume 8, Chapter 2):
Of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best—I’m sure it is the most religious—for I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.
Sterne goes on to speak of how the “plan follows the whole” (as opposed to the work following a plan, presumably) and though admitting that he “intercept[s] many a thought which heaven intended for another man,” he obviously prefers intuitive, discursive writing to something more planned or ideologically driven. (Pope seems to be his target of criticism here.) The approach Sterne describes is pretty much mine too (even in academic writing), though I generally don’t invoke God unless I’m trying to meet a tight deadline.
This brings up a tension I’ve just begun to think about: I teach my students to write a thesis statement, plan ahead, outline paragraphs, etc., yet I’ve never written a paper that way. Could I do an informal survey? How many of you out there begin a paper with a plan, and how many begin by simply starting to write? (I don’t mean free writing here; I mean writing something with the intention of making it work somehow.) Does anyone have any success stories about teaching academic writing in non-traditional ways?
Here’s a first response to your survey Anthony: I do begin with an outline. This does not necessarily mean that I would follow the outline but I need to see on a piece of paper the different topics/themes/issues I want to talk about. I have an advisor who is a personality psychologist and a painter and who frequently uses painting analogies when she teaches how to write research papers. One analogy she uses is to “work the whole canvas”, that is, thinking about the whole paper while writing one section, about the links between that section and the other parts of the paper, the way you would think about the spaces and continuities between objects when you’re drawing or painting. I think you need to begin with an outline to do that, but then, you continually work and revise the outline/structure as you write. I guess it’s circular process.
Reply to Nida
I am a traditionalist through and through. I have to outline all of my papers, especially larger pieces such as dissertation chapters. But, I’ve found that it allows me to free associate as I write because if I come up with a sudden idea, I just make a note on the outline. So, I don’t think linearly, but I need to have a linear structure to work with in order to really get cranking.
Reply to Jill
Good questions… I am curious about this too.
My own writing style, for anything formal, is to do a bit of focused freewriting on a separate document, and then put down a barebones “outline” in a Word document which will become the essay. Instead of a traditional outline, I will usually put down my section titles (or working section titles) and then add subheadings. I will then flesh out each section. I think this works for me because on the one hand, I have some sort of linear plan, but on the other hand, I can work on whatever section I am ready for, in a non-linear way. I may not write the sections in order, and sometimes, in my dissertation, for example, I will plug in relevant quotations and citations first, along with basic commentary. I will then go back and write it in more detail. As you can see, without a Word processor, I’d be lost.
By the way, I went to college abroad and we were given no education in how to write at the undergrad level, something that American colleges emphasize with the standard freshman composition sequence, and which is now catching on elsewhere. Some professors may have expected less in terms of form as opposed to content. Others expected you to sink or swim, and in time, you got better. Although I had other strengths as a writer, my structure and the clarity of my thesis were much improved after I started teaching freshman comp in the U.S.
Reply to Kate
Interesting question. I definitely outline, and spend a long time coining a thesis statement, before I begin writing in earnest. A few times, I’ve tried to write papers without doing this prep work, and it’s always been disastrous — took me twice as long to finish. And I agree with Jill that this kind of work doesn’t stifle one’s creativity — on the contrary, for me at least, it focuses my thinking in a way that opens up new possibilities. Inevitably, the final product doesn’t match my original outline, and in some cases it doesn’t even resemble the outline. But it’s a vital part of my process. I think teaching students YOUR process, and making them practice it while they’re in your class, helps them learn one way to do it. And by always emphasizing (using yourself as an example) that the writing process is extremely personal, they will understand the importance of having some sort of system, regardless of the precise form it takes.
Reply to Amy