The writing process...

[Caveat:  I started my computer world on an Apple IIe.  I went off to be a missionary and my parents got rid of that computer.  When I came back, I headed off to graduate school and had an original Mac Powerbook (It's still in my basement since all my graduate work is on it and it still works almost two decades later).  Then, somehow, I became a Dell person and only had Windows computers.  My last Dell laptop was replaced or repaired over a dozen times during the four years of its warranty.  When it broke once more, I finally gave into peer pressure and switched to a Macbook.  However, that means all of the educational PowerPoint presentations I built are no longer accessible to me.  I paid for the MAC version of the design programs, having made such an investment in them, and then just bought the economical Pages and Numbers for my new "Office" work on the Mac.  Hence, the images I have to offer are poor quality and I am not sure, being ill, I have the energy to recreate something like the one below.]

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As a scholar and then an educator and then a professor in education, I fully subscribe to and believe the very best way to approach literacy in the elementary school is Patricia Cunningham's Four Blocks Program.  Those Four Blocks consist of:  Guided Reading, Self-Selected Reading, Writing, and Working with Words.  This article has links to various aspects of the program.  And I have said that for working with words, the GOLD STANDARD is Patricia Cunningham's Phonics They Use.  Moving into the middle grades and high school, I am a great supporter of the Writing Workshop, as developed by Lucy Calkins.

There are many ways one can approach the writing process.  What is important is to encourage  children to write from the moment they understand what reading and writing are.  Donald Graves has proven that their nonsensical-looking scratches have meaning to them and getting them to read you the stories they have "written" is a powerful start to developing a child's literacy.  At home and in the classroom, bookshelves should include books/stories written by children, giving value to the ideas and voices the children are developing as readers and writers.

Below is a standard flow chart of the writing process.  The MOST IMPORTANT thing to remember about the writing process is that whilst there are key elements that writers need to practice, all writing is essentially idiosyncratic and the process of writing itself must be allowed to be fluid, not rigid.  By that I mean you simply do not march a writer through the "steps" of the writing process as if completing each one will result in a solid finished product.  The writing process is a more of continuum and less of a strictly linear process.

At this point, I will digress a bit and give you the best model of a continuum (learned from Louise Rosenblat) that I have seen.  Simple, but clear.  Instead of drawing a line with two end points, she draws a rectangular box, with a diagonal line from the top left corner to the lower left corner that is bisected from top to bottom, going from side to side.

Using her structure, this is the model of the continuum of the Issues of Self in Reader Engagement from my dissertation.  As you can see, by slicing the linear form of the continuum, there is always a bit of both selves informing the engagement, the self of the reader and the self of the character.  As you move along the continuum, sometimes there is more influence by one self than the other, but both are a part of engagement in the reading process.

So, what I am trying to say, albeit admittedly clumsily, is that the writing process should be viewed as all the parts overlapping to some degree, informing each step along the way.  Hence, writing is a fluid process from beginning (the idea) to the end (the completed text).

Take the first part of the writing process: Prewriting. It is essentially comprised of four key elements: brainstorming, researching, outlining and discussing.  All of those elements themselves can overlap and be repeated or returned to as, for example, discussing an outline might need to a new brainstorming session that in turn leads to further research.  And, once the actual Drafting part of the writing process has begun, the progression of the development of the text may reveal the need to return to some of the pre-writing activities.

To me, the model speaks for itself.  By that I mean I see no real need to explain each yellow segment, or green subsegments or purple deep subsegments.  The point is that all of those activities on the model are ones that take place during the writing process and, as a whole, move from one major part of the writing process to the next (remembering the fluid nature of that journey) until the project is complete.

The key point of the model is to demonstrate that the writing process is a multi-step, multi-faceted process.  Not all writing need to be taken to completion.  Writers should have the freedom to abandon projects that become overwhelming, unwieldy, or basically a bad idea.  All finished writing projects, however, should have more than a single draft and should include pre-writing activities, rewrites of drafts, editing, and some form of publishing.  Finally, the latter can take many forms, and over the course of their literacy instruction, writers should explore the process of writing in varied genres and publishing in varied formats.  The beauty of the advancements in technology since I first started my college degree in education is that publishing in varied formats today is quite easy, with programs, apps, and online hosting sites—to name a few technological tools—a plenty.

Transactional Theory of Literature...

The very best bit of my doctoral studies began with a glimpse whilst getting my master's degree. It was then I first heard of the Secondary World. Basically, this is when you get lost in a book, any text really. Technically, it is the willing suspension of disbelief. When I spend time in PERN, for example, in the world Anne McCaffrey created where dragons fly and share a telepathic lifelong bond with their chosen riders, I am willingly setting aside my very strong belief that dragons do not exist in order that I might eat and fly and fight alongside them. Those who enter fully the Secondary World are the ones who lose sight of the world in which they really exist...the ones who do not hear someone enter the room or sit down next to them whilst reading. You have Michael Benton (1980) to thank for that lesson.

It is my own personal contention that those who do not enjoy reading have not yet had that Secondary World experience, primarily because they have not yet found the right text for them.  Case in point, my own brother used to mock the hours I could spend reading and belittled my tears over "fake" stories.  Then, around 40, I think, my brother found the right sort of text for him, entered that Secondary World, and has been a voracious reader ever since.

As amazing as it was to learn what was happening to me when I got lost in a book, the best bit of my studies came later, when I "met" Louise Rosenblat, the most brilliant of all brilliant reading scholars. Back in the dark ages, she wrote Literature as Exploration (1938). Forty years later, the culmination of her Transactional Theory of reading was published as The Reader, The Text, and the Poem (1978). It is no hyperbole, to me, to state that everything that can be understood about reader engagement stems from her work.

She believed that every reading experience is an interactive event between the reader and the text, that meaning is made through that interaction. Meaning does not lie merely in the words of the author. Nor does meaning lie solely within the reader. Instead meaning is made, meaning is created, in the interaction that takes place between the text and the reader. Therefore, each event was unique because every reader is unique. That transaction, that exchange, she termed a "poem."  [A wonderful metaphor if you think about it.] The very best part of her theory is the understanding that each poem is also unique to the reader. By this I mean that when you re-read a text a new poem is created, because while you are still you, the you that you are in the next reading is unique from the you that you were in the previous reading.

The poem is created from your knowledge, your experience, your feelings...everything about you. Every day of our lives we change, we grow. Even the densest of us, even the most stuck-in-the-mud oafs, are still different because we have lived more, tasted more, heard more, felt more, seen more. Perhaps is it too blatant an example, but I read Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time before I was given the gift of faith and then again after. Imagine my surprise when I realized this was a story of faith and the Mrs Who, Mrs Which, and Mrs Whatsit are angels, not witches! How much more profound was experiencing anew The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe once I knew, once I was able to believe the work of the cross.

Of course, I also find fascinating how two Christians who are authors chose to wield their pens. I admire them both. One wrote as a Christian author; one wrote as an author whose faith colored her work but did not desire to write "Christian literature."  In fact, she oft took umbrage at those who would try to classify her (and subsequently restrict her work) as a Christian writer.  

L'Engle's The Arm of the Starfish has one of the most profound "poems" I have ever experienced, one that created anew is deeper and richer each time I visit the story. In a nutshell, there is a despicable man who causes the death of much beloved, innocent man. When the evil man's daughter is injured, he turns to the main character's father for help. The daughter is saved. The main character is astounded and incensed that her father would help the enemy. When she flings her anger and her betrayal at him, her father tells her that if you are going to care about the fall of the sparrow, you cannot pick or choose who the sparrow is going to be.

Good stuff there.  

SIGH.

I re-read all the time. All the time. I have favorite series I visit often. [Who wouldn't want regular doses of the brilliant pen of James Herriot?] I have authors for whom I own every single book that they published. When reading the next book in a series, my "rule" is that I first re-read all the books that came before it. For one series, that count is currently at 22! In this way, I prepare myself for the next serving by tasting once more the fullness of the feast offered me.

Just recently, for the fifth time, I re-read a series that has floored me in the new poems that are created each time I do so. They are not profound, I think, for anyone but me. The fall of the sparrow truth, well, the whole world could take note of that one. But Kaylin's battles? Well, I have been thinking of late that Michelle Sagara wrote this entire series just for me.

Here are a few excerpts:

Cast in Silence
It never went away. The regret. The guilt. Sometimes it ebbed for long enough that she could believe she was beyond it, but that was wishful thinking, another way of lying to herself. She didn't want to share this with Teela and Tain. Sharing bar brawls and near-death, yes. But this? [p.52]

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"Stop judging your life by the failures," he whispered.
"What should I do?" she whispered, "I'm always going to fail."
"We all do," he said softly, his voice closer now. "We all fail, but none of us fail all the time." [p. 178]

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"I think," she added, "that's why you can't see what I see; I never let you. It's dark, it's horrible – it's everything I believe about myself. The tower is speaking to me, yes. Bit by bit, it's unraveling all the lies of omission, even the ones I told myself. Maybe especially those. It's pulling out the things that I kept hidden because I couldn't stand to think about them.

"I don't know who I am, Severn. I don't think I've ever known who I am. But I know who I want to be, now. Maybe that's all I'll ever know. What I was is so large in my own mind I can't break through it if it's hidden. And I keep it hidden because I'm afraid. Of what it says about me. Of what it'll say about me to people whose opinion I actually care about.

"I'm not proud of it," she added." But I can pretend I accept it – as long as I never have to acknowledge it. And this," she said, throwing her arms wide, "is what it is. It's too big. I need to let it be what it was." [p. 296]


Cast in Secret
Epharim waited until she had joined them again and said softly, "You fear discovery. You fear your own thoughts." And he said it with pity. Kaylin was not the world's biggest pity fan."Fear, we all know," he added. "And we all know rejection and pain. But none of us have ever suffered this fear of being revealed, this fear of being seen as we are." He was serene, and without judgment. [p. 80]

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[Kaylin] "Would you change your past?"
[Severn] "Parts of it. In a heartbeat."
He shrugged again.
"You wouldn't?"
"I can't. I don't waste time thinking about changing what can't be changed."
"And you're never afraid that someone won't judge you? That they won't misunderstand you or misconstrue you as you are now?"
"People judge me all the time. Be careful of that," he added, pointed at a trellis that grew near the roadside. Vines were wrapped around it, and they rustled in the nonexistent breeze.
"But they don't have the right –"
"They have the right to form their own opinions. I have the right to disagree with them in a fashion that doesn't break the Imperial Laws."
"But-"
"I'm not afraid of the judgment of strangers," he told her quietly. "I live with my own judgment. That's enough. And I judge others, and live by those judgments, as well."
"I don't-" want to be despised or hated. She couldn't quite frame the words with her lips, they sounded so pathetic as a thought. But Severn had her name; she felt it had between them, it's foreign symbols not so much as sound as a texture. Ellariayn.
He stopped walking and caught her face in his hands, pulling it up. She met his eyes. "Then stop despising and hating yourself, Kaylin. We're not what we were. We're not what we will be. Everyone changes. Everyone can change. Let it go. If you're always afraid to be known, you'll never understand anyone else. If you never understand anyone else, you're never going be a good Hawk. You'll see what others see, or what they want you to see. You won't see what's there." [pp. 99–100]


Cast in Chaos
"I...I don't know how." It was hard, to say it. To admit it. Especially to Nightshade. Ignorance was weakness.
No, she thought. Ignorance was only weakness if you clung to the damn thing. [p. 107]


Re-reading this series, I regularly find bits and pieces of thoughts and choices and reactions that  I had not noticed before, bits and pieces that reach up and grab my heart, shake my soul, and very much trouble my waters.  I am not Kaylin and she is not me.  But we share so very many of the same struggles.  Each time I enter her world, the poems of meaning created are different because I am different, a bit older with new experiences.  And I understand Kaylin better because I understand myself better.  It is surprising to me that, still, after many times through the series, I find new bits to highlight and note for myself on my Kindle.

My doctoral research, completely unique at the time, looked at strong female protagonists in modern high fantasy, was conducted in a girls book club.  In another entry, perhaps, I will go through a brief summary of my research outcomes and the model of "engagement of self" that I devised.  It is odd, thus, having created that academic work, I still find myself marveling at the power of reader engagement and the ever new experiences I can have with a text that is completely familiar to me.

Rosenblat was a genius in a way I believe few understand. Yes, she had her day in the sun, but scholars have this distressing tendency to chase after the latest and the greatest, leaving behind truths that could continue to inform and frame new academic discourse, new discovery. The true depths of her work have yet to be plumbed. Its profundity never truly measured.