Raymond J. Rodrigues

Moving Away from Writing-Process Worship.

For a while, it seemed that the writing process was the be-all-and-end-all of composition theory and practice. The National Writing Project promoted it with a degree of missionary zeal that would have made any itinerant preacher proud. In fact, the Bay Area Writing Project and the National Writing projects may have accomplished more good in a relatively short time than any other single effort in training teachers to teach composition. Unfortunately, as with any religious movement, what often begins in a rational way, carefully considered and cautiously applied, tends to be codified and over-simplified by converts. What seems like a natural way of going about things to those born into a religion can become a set of laws or prescriptions for converts. Any variation becomes virtual heresy. Thus, the writing process became something of a cult.

Tools for Developing Prewriting Skills.

Prewriting activities, those activities writers use to generate and organize ideas prior to actually writing, represent what is perhaps the most important phase of the writing process. For those of us who have made writing a normal part of our lives, experience at putting together a piece of writing and the time to do so at an unhurried pace may be all we need to help us get through that prewriting phrase. I could think about this article driving up and down Ute Pass, to and from work, waiting for my dull chain saw to sand its way through a log, or just staring at a wall. All this creative procrastination was enabled by my not having to meet a deadline. As writing teachers trying to help our students, however, we do not have the time to allow them to operate at a leisurely pace, and so we must force them, often through purely artificial means, through the prewriting phrase. For literature teachers, the traditional way is to have students read a selection and then discuss it, that serving as the prewriting. Other activities, viewing a film, taking a field trip, listening to a guest speaker, or conducting a survey, can serve equally well to provide ideas, although students still need guidance in organizing ideas around central concepts. Perhaps the most common prewriting technique employed by teachers is brainstorming. Brainstorming can be fast, building many ideas, one upon the other. To operate best, teachers should not criticize or alter student ideas during this process, or they risk stifling student contributions. But the weaknesses of brainstorming include the possibility of it getting out of hand, the tendency of more vocal students to dominate the class and control the direction of ideas, the loss of ideas from more inhibited students, and a certain degree of super-