It is liberating to compose without deliberate rehearsing, ferocious revision, and continuous rereading. As someone who struggled with spelling all of their life and never read carefully enough to catch her own grammar mistakes until college, I have felt the need as an adult, writer, and teacher to spend much time on these three areas. It is also best practice as outlined in Penny Kittle’s book, Write Beside Them, who suggests this trifecta. rehearsing, revising, and rereading is an important practice and necessary to employ in more formal writing pieces.
My professor this Spring 2020 semester recommended that I write more freely, To not spend so much time perfecting the language of each blog post but instead focuses on the authentic ideas I rapidly generate. Perhaps shorter and more direct are more appealing and inviting when blogging. I have to re-consider my composing process for a new and different audience and writing purpose.
So, here is my first blog post that I barely revised and only edited for blatant grammar mistakes and typos. And, there was no rehearsing here.There was no preparing for what I would say in the blog post, jotting notes down in a notebook or on my phone, or letting the ideas marinate before writing. Instead, as soon as I thought the ideas, I spoke them into my phone and then transferred it to my computer. I did add the following few sentences here and tweaked the next paragraph’s last sentence before completing the blog post. On different occasions, I speak into my phone right away but still spend time between my phone notes and computer rehearsing my ideas. And even then, I take three or four passes at a final draft before submitting it.
Looking to the future, I might try this style more often. It felt really good to share my thoughts in a quicker way without self-monitoring my language so carefully. While I feel like all of my writing is authentic, I am curious to see if this blog post reads or feels different from my previous blogs here and the posts I write for the Pennsylvania Writing and Literature blog.
