Putting the "Explore" back in "Explore and Consolidate"

     After reading the Flower and Hayes article entitled "Cognitive Theory of Writing" (1981) it provided a lot of insight into a process that I have already regarded for myself. It is difficult to think of a specific writing process for myself before I had done the reading as it has always sort of varied given the prompt or subject of the writing I was composing. 

    I came upon the section of the reading of how we come about the goals. In my case, it was the process of "generating goals and supporting sub-goals which embody a purpose" (381). When I begin to think of a paper I am going to write, I am generally pretty logical about the process when it comes to goals. Obviously, the main goal is always to create the perfect, most concise thesis that I possibly can. From there, my subgoals started to form in the idea of formatting. I would love to say that I like to creatively play with my paper before the final draft is created but that just is not the case! I often spend a lot of time before developing my goals or subgoals just exploring the readings/learned knowledge. I love to explore what I want to discuss in my paper prior and then consolidate it on a sheet of paper before writing it down. This seems to heavily equate to the portion of the Flower and Hayes reading about "exploring and consolidating". What really jumped out about this is the explore piece. I believe that the peak of my creativity is exploring my thesis ahead of time so when I begin to write I know exactly the point I am trying to get across. Once I begin to write the piece, my sub-goals rarely change!

With all of this being said, it does not mean that I don't take time for myself to jot down some notes or ideas on paper before I begin my draft. After these drafts, I can even change it up if my sub-goals DO change. They sometimes do!

    This idea of "exploring" is also touched on in chapter 5 of Spandel's text entitled "The 9 Rights of Every Writer" (2005). It is referenced in this text that getting students to a place where they can try new things to emerge as better thinkers is very important. "Our goal should be to take students to such a place of comfort with writing that they will persist through three pages of random thought to an emerging clarity on page four because they have not one shred of doubt they will get there" (72). 

 I honestly did not find my own comfort in being a "bad writer" and even having that exciting idea of learning through "play" until college. I never had that natural progression, so when I really started to dig into my craft as a writer it became more apparent I needed to make room for more play! I think that is what might make my process different from a novice writer. I am not afraid to take time and dig into what I mean before I write. I know what it is like to have a past of being afraid of that and have taken processes to overcome that. 

I think the idea of exploring or not being afraid of "bad writing" as a pre-cursor is something that I have learned in the past couple of years and I hope to foster that in my classroom in the future. 

I thought I might end this post by linking my writing Spotify playlist! Thanks!

Emily's Awesome Playlist