Summer 2022 Post 7: Writing Takes Time

One of the most difficult tasks I have in my composition classes is helping my students accept that writing is a process that unfolds over an extended amount of time. Students don't like that "extended amount of time" part. I understand that. They all want to be one-draft wonders. Students are busy, they have much to do in a short amount of time, and they just want to get the document finished, off their computer screen, and onto the teacher's computer screen.

I wish it worked that way, but it usually doesn't.

I try to explain this "extended amount of time" by dividing writing into two parts: first, writing for yourself (learning) and then writing for others (communicating). Our Doc1 can help me illustrate these two phases and explain why writing takes so much time.

The Doc1 assignment asks you to write about an academic issue that you have experienced in college. Some of you chose procrastination as your issue, so I'll use that topic in this post. Unless you are already an expert in why college students procrastinate, then you had to do some research to learn something about procrastination among college students. This means that you used writing to search for data, take notes, and assemble that information into a document that started to make sense. If you didn't do all that writing, then you likely had nothing of value to bring to your readers, other college students who also struggle with procrastination. Writing is first and foremost one of the best tools we have for learning academic material. If you can write it, then you probably know it.

Unfortunately, learning takes time, and we all learn unequally. That's a drag. Some students read quickly and absorb information quickly. Good for them. It's a gift from God, like being able to play the piano without training. We all know someone who can do it, and most of us know that we can't. Most of us learn slowly. I do. But the point is that you have to learn something that is of value for your reader, and that learning takes time — usually more time than you have. Too bad. You have to do it anyway, or your writing will never be very good, and you will be of no use to your reader. That may not matter much to you in college, but it will kill you when you are employed. If you bring no value to your customers and colleagues, then they will move on from you — usually sooner rather than later.

Bringing value as a writer means that you are bringing some knowledge, some information, that is current, relevant, authoritative, and purposeful (remember the CRAP test?). And remember: if your reader already knows it, then it ain't information. It's just chatter. Chatter is okay in social texting, but not for customers and colleagues. For them, you must always bring value. You should always write from a position of relative knowledge: you should know more about the topic than your reader does. If you don't know more than the reader, then be quiet, and let your reader talk. We all know how obnoxious it is to listen to someone go on and on about a topic that they know less about than we do. Don't be the writer who does that.

However, this writing from a position of relative knowledge is actually a big problem in the college classroom because usually you are writing to the teacher about something they know more about than you do — say, World War II or programming in C++. They've been studying World War II or C++ for years, and you for just a couple of weeks. It's awkward to write to readers who know more about a topic than you do, but most teachers ask you to do this because they want to check if you've learned anything about world history or computer programming, for instance. Teachers want you to demonstrate that you have learned something, and that learning also takes time. Get over it. It's why you're in college: to learn new stuff. If you already knew this stuff, then you wouldn't need to be here.

Depending on the assignment and your preparation, learning what you want to say can take the most time. Most of you managed this part of the Doc1 assignment fairly well: you learned something, and you laid out what you learned in your document. But too many of you overlooked the second phase of writing: communicating for a given reader. Knowing your stuff is great, but it's useless to the rest of us if you can't communicate it. We've all had teachers who really knew their stuff but couldn't communicate it in a way that students could understand. You didn't like that, did you? Then don't do that to your readers. 

I assign a reader for you (in the case of Doc1, college students who share your academic issue) in part so that you won't write to me. I'm a grader, not a reader, and those are very different roles. Don't confuse them — ever.

Most of you managed to identify your topic adequately in your introduction, but too many of you did not identify your reader or what value you were bringing to that reader. This is unfortunate, because all good writers can shift from thinking about what they know to thinking about what their readers need to know. Those are not the same things, though they can involve the same information. For instance, for Doc1, you should say something like:

College students often struggle with procrastination, but fortunately, experts have identified two (or 3 or 5) strategies for coping with this damaging habit.

You have to frame your essay right up front for your readers; otherwise, they won't know what you're writing about. You frame your essay by identifying the writer, the reader, the subject, and the text. This is exactly what emails do in their standard header: 

• From: You, a Fellow College Student
• To: College Students Who Struggle with Procrastination, and
• Subject: How to Manage Procrastination in College.

Of course, you don't want to be quite as plain as email in your academic essays. You should strive for a more elegant and engaging introduction, but you should still provide the same basic information: who is talking to whom about what and why. You must frame the conversation for your reader so that they can understand who you are and why you are talking to them. And that takes time.

As most of you have learned by now, one of the things I need as your grader is impeccable MLA formatting. I gave you a well formatted template, and too many of you didn't follow it; thus, you didn't get the response from me that you wanted. Yes, I know that extreme attention to MLA formatting rules takes time. It's tedious. Do it anyway. Your Little Seagull Handbook has a whole section devoted to MLA, and you'll find wonderful guides on Purdue OWL, the best online site for managing your academic documents. Mastering MLA (or APA) takes time, but you have to do it. By the way, a small handful of you get the MLA mostly right on your first draft. That means you've already spent the time in some other class to learn it, while the rest of you have to spend the time in this class.

Writing a good blog post takes time. I've written hundreds of blog posts, and I've gotten quicker at it, but it still takes me time. I accept that. If you accept that good writing takes time, then you will become a better writer.