SECTION I

INTRODUCTION TO THE WRITER’S PRACTICE

The experiences in this book are designed to help you develop a writer’s “practice.”

But what do I mean by this? To start, think of a chef.

What makes a chef a chef?

A chef must have a chef’s skills: knife work, cooking techniques, and the like. They also should have a deep knowledge of flavors and ingredients; how salt, fat, and acid combine to create different taste experiences; and how different cooking techniques bring out different qualities in the ingredients.

Chefs must be able to look in the refrigerator and pantry, and be able to assemble a meal. Chefs need to be able to plan and execute a dish, and juggle multiple tasks during the execution phase. They must be able to correct course when something looks off, and they need to have the confidence to know when something needs to go in the garbage rather than be served to diners, even if it means someone will grumble. All this makes up a chef’s practice.

A practice consists of the practitioner’s attitudes, skills, habits of mind, and knowledge. When I’m in the act of writing, I’m not consciously aware of these different aspects, because my “practice” has largely become second nature, but this is the goal: that when confronted with a writing-related task, your practice kicks in and starts solving the problem.

During any part of the writing process, a writer is engaging in the writer’s practice. I’m doing it as I type these words, the same way a chef is when sautéing vegetables.

But I’m also doing it as I walk the dog, thinking about the projects I’m working on, just as a chef is when planning a menu. A teacher’s practice isn’t limited to the time in class but includes all the preparation that makes class possible. A practice is not something that begins and ends at the moment you’re actively doing it. It is a method of continual processing and problem solving.

For the elements of a practice to become second nature, it helps to consider them deliberately.

Attitudes: what does a writer believe and value about the act of writing?

Skills: what can a writer do?

Habits of mind: how do writers think?

Knowledge: what does a writer know?

What do each of these look like as we’re practicing our practice?

ATTITUDES

The first thing to know about writing is, in the words of Jeff O’Neal, a longtime writing teacher and now digital media entrepreneur, “You are going to spend your whole life learning how to write, and then you are going to die.”

Even though this may seem daunting, it means writing will never get boring. As you work through the experiences in this book, you will absolutely gain a sense of your own growth and improvement, but you will never reach the finish line. There is no finish line. Perhaps I am perverse, but I find this sentiment comforting. Writing should never be boring, provided we are writing in ways that matter to us.

SKILLS

The experiences in this book are specifically and deliberately designed to provide opportunities to practice the skills associated with writing. In fact, the design is so deliberate that I often just come right out and say, “In this experience, we will be practicing . . .”

Big picture, a writer knows how to conceive, draft, revise, edit, and polish a piece of writing. However, almost innumerable skills underlie each part of the process,

A writer, for example, knows how to target a message to achieve a specific purpose when communicating to a specific audience within a specific medium or genre. This is called analyzing the rhetorical situation. In other words, one writes to real people under different conditions, while trying to say something that meets their needs and conveys one’s message.
A writer must be able to do research appropriate to the rhetorical situation.
A writer must be able to think “critically” in order to understand the impact of their own ideas on the audience, which includes understanding the ideas and emotions others will bring to the act of reading.
A writer must be able to craft sentences that achieve their purposes in language appropriate for their occasion and audience.

Every experience in this book touches on these elements of the writer’s practice, some more heavily than others, depending on the experience, but at a minimum you will always be writing to an audience to fulfill a specific purpose.

HABITS OF MIND

I have been writing for so long, I find I take writers’ habits of mind for granted, so I must pause and think for a moment about what I think. What do I believe about writing? A big part of what I believe is articulated in the “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing,” a document developed collaboratively by the Council of Writing Program Administrators, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the National Writing Project.*

Writers must be curious. Writers want to know more about themselves and the world around them.
Writers must be open. They desire answers to questions while recognizing those answers may conflict with previously held beliefs or that there may be no single answer, and the truth instead resides in shades of gray.
Writers must be engaged. Believing what you’re writing about matters—to an audience above all—makes it much easier to be involved and invested in learning.
Writers must be creative. There is no formula for most writing, so almost every occasion involves moving from what is known into the unknown and finding novel solutions to unique problems.
Writers must be ethical and responsible. When writing to audiences, writers are responsible for the accuracy and truthfulness of what they write. Writers never knowingly deceive nor take the ideas of others without credit.
Writers must be empathetic. Empathy not only helps us understand the audiences we’re writing for but also allows us to better observe the world in which we’re writing.
Writers must be obsessive. No one will care about your own writing more than you. The desire to get it “right” starts with the writer.
Writers must learn from their experiences. A fancy term for this is “metacognition,” or thinking about thinking. This is where the reflection portion of the experiences comes in.

Think of these as the values working in the background as you make choices within the writing experiences. If you’re aware of their existence, you’re more likely to put them into practice.

KNOWLEDGE

Writing knowledge has two dimensions:

Knowledge about writing, which includes understanding all the elements of the writer’s practice outlined above.
Knowledge concerning the subject that’s being written about.

Knowledge about writing is built through a combination of study, experience, and reflection. Much of what I know about writing comes from my own experiences with writing and teaching writing. While I often read what other people say about writing, most of what I know about writing is rooted in my own experiences. This is why this book focuses on writing experiences.

Subject knowledge is acquired over time as you are exposed to more and more information. Unlike cramming for a test, where much of what you “learned” disappears not long after the exam, writing requires you to retain and utilize knowledge, making it significantly “stickier.”

As much as possible, the experiences in this book are designed to encourage you to access (and then build upon) your existing subject expertise. But there are some experiences that will require you to enhance your knowledge of what you’re writing about.

This first section is designed to work on some of the foundational aspects of the writer’s practice, things like the writer’s process, considering the audience, and reading like a writer. These foundations will be carried through the rest of the book, but in this section the experiences focus specifically on highlighting these aspects of the writer’s practice.