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Daniel Alfonso
Professor Leslie Wolcott
English 1101 0M10
15 September 2014
Have you ever wondered how you write? Whether it be essays, short stories, or even
poems, have you ever stopped to think about the whole writing process that you undergo just to
write? Anne Lamott, a prominent, successful novelist, Mike Rose, a professor at the UCLA
Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, Paul Prior, an English professor at the
University of Illinois, and Sondra Perl, a professor of English at Lehman College and the
Graduate Center of the City University of New York; have all studied how people write and what
processes you go through to successfully write a paper of your own. I was recently put to the test
to see if I could study my own writing and see what my writing process consisted of. The results
of my own self study were pretty interesting.
Beginning with Anne Lamott, she explains that through her studies, she finds that
students always have a bad first draft, or as she calls it, "a shitty first draft." She develops this
point by saying that "The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it
romp all over the place,..." (Lamott 528) I find this statement to be highly relatable, and I feel
that you would agree. She also says that with your own writing, comes your own thoughts and
ideas that should be those of your own and not of others. To effectively write, you must get rid of
the critiques and naysayers that are trying to hold you back and just write how you want to and
how you feel, because then it will become a more fluid process. With that being said, I move on
to two other writers, Mike Rose and Stephen Fry, who share some common opinions with Anne.
Mike Rose in "Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language: A Cognitivist

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Analysis of Writers Block," uses former students personal accounts in his studies to bring in real
world examples to prove his point being that we tend to focus on a set of "rules" that we were
taught in school to write our essays. Some rules include to always have three main points, or to
have a good introduction paragraph. Out of the ten students that he examined, he found that of
the "five students who experienced blocking, aka writers block, were all operating either with
writing rules or with planning strategies that impeded rather than enhanced the composing
process." (Rose, 534) He found that when students do this, they tend to not write as affectively as
they should be writing. We can all relate to this because I'm sure we remember going back to
high school where it was a one track minded style of writing, it seems, where you were taught all
these rules to follow, but never any freedom to express your own thoughts.
Continuing on with the thoughts about how we write, Paul Prior says that with writing,
there are two main things involved, composition and inscription. Composition meaning what
goes into the essay, for example the ideas or thoughts you have, and inscription being the
physical act of writing the essay, weather handwriting it or typing it. He talks about how
"composing and inscription are separable" (Prior, 495). He means that you can compose an
essay, or write an essay without actually physically writing it, or editing it, or composition
without inscription, or inscription without composition. I'm not too sure about you, but I know
that I've had some struggle with composition in certain situations throughout high school with
those random fifty minute "pop-essays" if you will. Coming up with thoughts and ideas to write
about can be difficult, which is why I recommend to just start writing your essay, and the ideas
will just start to pour out. You could also take a few minutes to study your own writing like I did,
and like Sondra Perl talks about doing. She uses the example of Tony in her research, who, when
told to write, was able to write about himself at a more fluid pace, than writing for someone who

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he knew was going to grade and judge his writing. With that being said, you could write a small
essay, or read a few chapters out of a book, and record all the thoughts that you thought about,
whether they be distracting, or informative, to see what goes through your mind when writing.
Things like "coding" your work and attaching meaning to the certain points in it will help you
out in discovering your own writing. She says that " By taking specific observable behaviors that
occur during composing and supplying labels for them, this system thus far provides a way of
analyzing the process that is categorical and capable of replication." (Perl, 621)
What I discovered with my own writing, using Sondra Perl's method, was very
interesting. I responded to a writing assignment, and conducted my own study there, where I
wrote down all of my thoughts and coded them after I was done. I used a set of codes ranging
from distractions, relating ideas, to frustration, and even to the occasional thought about food. I
found that, like most people when writing about a specific topic, I got distracted a lot.
Distractions played a key role in this research about thirty times, ranging from random thoughts,
to getting up to go see what a noise was. I also realized that within the plethora of distractions,
that I would have periods where I would relate certain ideas back to the writing, and would
comment points in my head that I found to be interesting. There were some points where I would
revise my own work and be self critical of it, leading into distractions that made no sense in the
grand scheme of it all.
After conducting my own research on my writing, it did show me how complex writing
can really be, and how I write. It showed me that after brief distractions, I can pick right back up
and continue writing and process my ideas. This way of studying yourself can really help you
become a better writer, by showing you when and where your strong points are in writing, and
when and how much, if applicable, you actually get distracted when writing. It was a very

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interesting experiment nonetheless, that you could do on yourself to study your own techniques
or "flaws". When going back and remembering all of my random thoughts written down on
paper, it was pretty funny to see what I had been thinking about at that time, making it a fun
experiment as well.

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Works Cited Page

Lamott, Anne. "Shitty First Drafts" Writing About Writing, A College Reader. 2nd Ed.
Wardle, Elizabeth, Downs, Doug. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin, 2011. 527-531. Print.
Rose, Mike. "Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language: A Cognitivist
Analysis of Writers Block." Writing About Writing, A College Reader. 2nd Ed. Wardle,
Elizabeth, Downs, Doug. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin, 2011. 532-546. Print.
Matthew Rogers. "Stephen Fry Kinetic Typography - Language" Online Video Clip.
YouTube. YouTube, Sep 30, 2010. Web. 27 Aug. 2014.
Prior, Paul. "Tracing Process: How Texts Come into Being." Writing About Writing, A
College Reader. 2nd ED. Wardle, Elizabeth, Downs, Doug. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins,
2011.Pg. 492-526. Print.
Perl, Sondra. "The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers." Writing About
Writing, A College Reader. 2nd ED. Wardle, Elizabeth, Downs, Doug. Boston: Bedford/St.
Martins, 2011.Pg. 615-639. Print.