The URL for the origninal page is http://www.marlboro.edu/~nickc/research/other.html

A Survival Guide to Writing

adapted from Nick Carbonne, Marlboro College



Introduction:

In writing courses, we take time to explore in class writing in many stages of progress: simply talking about something before you even write, using journals, working with multiple drafts, revising for argument or organization, brainstorming, freewriting, abstracting, summarizing, and list making. However, in most other university courses, unless explicitly told otherwise, teachers will want to see only one draft, a final draft, well-thought out, error free, and on time.

What this means to you:

It means you can't rush off a draft the night before the way you can for a first draft for this course. It means you need to find ways to continue the peer review and feedback process you learned in your composition course. It means you need to leave time to carefully proofread and edit. It means you need to know what your professor expects in the paper, and how the assignment fits in with the entire course and its grading structure. It means you will have to do all these things on your own.

Here's How You Can.

When you receive a writing assignment, make sure you know these particulars:

  • Can you use the first person? Some teachers believe it is improper for academic writing. Follow the old adage: "When in Rome..."
  • How formal does the teacher like essays to be? Some teachers object to an 'everyday' voice, and require a more formal detached tone. Translated: do not use colloquialisms or slang.
  • Does the teacher value a specialized vocabulary--what words and phrases from the course's readings does he or she use?
  • What citation format is required?
  • Will you be allowed to revise again after a paper is graded? If the answer is yes, do not assume you can rush a draft in the night before.
  • Is the teacher willing to look at provisional drafts and/or thesis statements? Some teachers will do this. Others will accept an outline, others still will ask you to schedule an appointment to talk about what you want to write about. These are good ways to get to know what your teacher looks for.
  • Does the teacher believe that the thesis statement must be in the first paragraph?
  • Remember Connors and Lunsford's list of frequently cited usage and punctuation errors. Do you know if the teacher has any particular errors that annoy him or her? Do you have a strategy for spotting the items in this list?

Keep an Eye on your Writing Style

Sometimes, when you are writing about new information, you may lose your confidence and your writing might crumble. Keep a few things in mind.

  • Use strong verbs and try not to fall into an overuse of the verb to be.
  • Look for places in the writing where you might be repeating an idea sentence to sentence. Very often, these redundancies do not use the same words, but they do restate the same thought. In class we called this spinning your wheels (like a rear tire caught in the mud). You mind is working on an idea, literally turning it over in your head as you examine it. Learn to spot this when the thinking goes onto the page. Revise the writing so only you and your reviewer ever know you got bogged down for a bit. Let everyone else think you just know how to cruise in style.
  • If you're stuck and need to get moving, try writing a draft in the first person. Then revise out all references to yourself (I think, it is my opinion that, I believe, and so on).
  • Don't ever sit down to write and not write something. A lot of times you'll be tempted to get a draft right in one shot, but trying to do that may cause a block. Or you might not know what to say and are frozen by the blank screen or page. If that happens, write anything: describe what you're thinking, what's in front of you, what you had for breakfast, make a "to-do" list. If you go to write and can't write what you intend, and then leave with writing nothing, you risk letting writing become associated with not being able. Doctors say the worst place to be when you can't sleep is in bed because if it happens too often, you begin to assciate going to bed with not sleeping. The same holds true with writing. Thus I repeat, if you go to write, write something every time.

Plan Your Writing in Advance

In most courses, a syllabus indicates the semester's writing assignments. advance. In other courses, so you should plan in advance:

  1. Get all the syllabi from all your courses and highlight the paper due dates.
  2. Get a monthly planner book, the kind, that when open, shows a full week. For each due date, go to the appropiate date in your planner, and write in the date, course, and number of pages with a red pen.
  3. Next, with an orange pen, go to the date seven days before the due date, and write 'paper due next week, class, # pages'.
  4. Next, with a green pen, go back another seven days and write, 'paper due 2 weeks, course, # pages.'

As you do this, you'll see your planner fill up with green, orange and red notations. One week might have a green, two yellows and a red. The idea is to start papers on the the green, have a full draft ready for revising on the yellow day, and making sure you've completed the paper and had time to carefully copyedit it by the red day.

Some papers may not need two weeks; others may need more. Use the syllabi's description of the paper's role in the course and the grade scheme to determine that. A research paper might have two green entries (start brainstorm for one; complete hypothesis and research plan for the second), followed by three or four weeks of yellow, and two weeks of red (complete draft with full bibliography complete by first red, fully copyedited and checked for accurate use of sources on second red day, the due date for the teacher).

With each color define a writing goal. For a green entry it might be, 'get 4 page rough draft done in one hour, just type it out to start thinking.'

Read for Others, Have Others Read for You

Ask classmates if you can read their essays and drafts; it will help you think of things to write about and will show you different perspectives and approaches to the assignment.

MAKE AN APPOINTMENT AT THE LEARNING RESOURCE CENTEROr find classmates willing to listen to your paper and make comments. Write notes that tell them what you want to do in a draft or in a piece, tell them what your assignment is and what you see as working in the piece. If you have a particular usuage or punctuation lapse that occurs, ask them to look for it. If you're trying to cut down on your use of certain phrases (due to the fact that, has the ability to, and such), ask them to look for those. Readers can help with style by simply circling every use of the verb to be (is, are, was, were) and by underlining prepositions (in, on, over, near, etc.).

The Number One Survival Rule

If you don't know or aren't sure of something, ASK, ASK, ASK your professor.