Tuesday’s writing tip for authors

Authors looking for a process to guide them through the steps involved in writing a book will discover the topic addressed throughout The Essential Don Murray: Lessons from America’s Greatest Writing Teacher.

How do writers write? and How do I write? were topics that Don Murray addressed throughout his life.

The search for a writing process forms the backbone of The Essential Don Murray, Thomas Newkirk and Lisa C. Miller’s just-published anthology of Don’s extensive writings, teachings, and personal notebooks.

The starting point is Don’s statement (which perfectly reveals his speaking tone):

The process of making meaning with written language cannot be understood by looking backward from a finished page. Process can not be inferred from product any more than a pig can be inferred from a sausage.

Nevertheless, after referring to the steps involved in writing as an “explosion of elements in simultaneous action and reaction,” Don goes on to describe 3 distinct steps “as a piece of work–essay, story, article,poem, research paper…moves towards its own meaning.” The steps are:

1. Rehearsing, or, as Don sometimes referred to it, prewriting. “Ther is a special awareness, a taking in of the writer’s raw material of information, before it is clear how it it will be used.”
   
2. Drafting. Don calls this “center stage,” where the writer experiments. “The writer drafts a piece of writing to find out what it may have to say.”
3. Revising. This involves the writer distancing himself from what he has written, to gain the perspective necessary to improve it. In Don’s words, “The writing stands apart from the writer, and the writer interacts with it, first to find out what the writing has to say, and then to help the writing say it clearly and gracefully.”

Although Don probably couldn’t write a dull sentence if he had to, many  of Don’s most memorable quotes come from the serendipity of the drafting stage, where new meanings emerge:

There is always magic in this for me, and wonder because I do not know what I am going to say until it is said.

The exuberance with which Don explored the writing process, in himself and other writers, plays a big role in the pleasure you’ll find reading The Essential Don Murray.