Okay, whew, Chapter 8 from Mr. Smith was a lot like reading Philosophy. There seemed to be a large amount of words where possibly less would do. Not that he didn't have valid points and ideas, it just felt to me that it took a long time to get there.
On the positive side, I would love to have "someone" to transcribe my thoughts. (Chapter 3) I have made the effort to buy a recorder and dictate my stories and thoughts to myself. Unfortunately, I am at best a six finger typist and since I was the one doing the transcription it consisted of a lot of stopping and rewinding and ultimate frustration. I either write it out by hand or just sit at the computer and hunt and peck.
(An aside: Did anyone else get a flashback moment when he mentions the value of electric typewriters and word processors? Or are you all too young? I looked at the copyright date a couple of times just to make sure I was not back in high school. Scary)
Smith p.21, "Composition and transcription can interfere with one another." I do agree, but I also find that using a computer with spell check and grammar check enabled makes it hard for me to ignore the red and green underlines. I can't skip past them as much as I have tried. I have moved on in my writing but my mind's eye still sees those colors no matter how many pages previous and I have to go back and fix it or I get bogged down. Maybe just control issues? I understand his concept: don't get hung up on the form, let the words and ideas flow and then go back and fix the stuff during the revision and editing phases. If I turn off the spellcheck do you think I'll still see the red line anyway?
9R--Gotta love the name, Sneed B. Collard III. You almost have to be a writer with a name like that. Did you notice his son's name is Braden? Not ...IV. But, I digress.
Spandel's Chapter 4 reiterated some of the ideas we were talking about in class. Every person has a different way of approaching a project, any kind of project. The individual should be allowed to find and cultivate their own process and then follow it through. Where the problem seems to lie is in getting the teachers/instructors/whoever to break out of their own programmed modes to bring this into fruition. How we learned and what we learned always will remain somewhere in our heads and it seems to pop up when we find ourselves jammed. We reboot and go back to original programming every time the power goes out. She makes many other good points, way too many to cover here, but maybe in class. For instance: balance (45), structure (45), prewriting, keepers, you decide if your writing is good, the teacher showing their own writing. Why does that seem like such an odd concept when it should be perfectly natural? As we talked about before, shouldn't a writing teacher write? Alas.
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