Teasing the Process Out of “Begin[ning] Before Your Ready”

What I most appreciated about today’s reading was the articulation of and teasing out of the processes that we all take part in. While—yes—I do mean both teaching and writing, teaching perhaps maybe the easier example to see Boice’s overall point. As new teachers or even recently “new” teachers, I would hesitate to say we have it all figured out. While a couple years of experience has helped to work out my immediate jitters, there is still much more territory to be conquered. One prime example is that I keep thinking that I will eventually have a finalized syllabus that I can reuse every semester, including a whole semesters worth of lesson plans. Despite the fact that I have taught several semesters of the same requirement, this day of totality has yet to arrive. I always find that I am revamping my teaching, trying out new things and exploring new directions. And, for a Type A personality, I am perfectly OK with this fact.

While not initially knowing it, I think I gained much of this attitude from my writing process. I, like Boice advocates, do lots of variations of prewriting. I’ll take extensive reading notes; I’ll do brainstorming sessions; I’ll outline smaller points rather than a complete argument. In other words, I do a lot of prewriting activities. In fact, it once resulted in my advisor telling me that I had an odd writing process, in that I didn’t always have a precise end of mind. She admitted to having the same technique but neither of us could fully articulate how it worked or why it was considered out of the ordinary.

Therefore, coming back to Boice, what I find useful in these chapters is not just an acknowledgement of this process but the teasing out of how to conceptualize it—perhaps even at an earlier stage than I had implemented in the past. He provides such suggestions as organizing notes into categories in order to illuminate developing patterns. Perhaps I already do this practice without knowing it; I don’t know. It struck me as both new and familiar at the same time. Regardless, what I think stands out as the most beneficial aspect of this reading is simply the awareness it brings. Or, to put it another way, the way in which it articulates a more comprehensive process of writing and compels us to enter into the discussion, thereby challenging us to become more cognizant of our own writing practices.