Understanding Composing, by Sondra Perl, College Composition and Communication Vol. 31, No. 4 (Dec., 1980), pp. 363-369
Author: Sondra Perl
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Any psychological process, whether the development of thought or voluntary behavior, is a process undergoing changes right before one’s eyes.
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Under certain conditions it becomes possible to trace this development.’
— L. S. Vygotsky
It’s hard to begin this case study of myself as a writer because even as I’m searching for a beginning, a pattern of organization, I’m watching myself, trying to understand my behavior.
As I sit here in silence, I can see lots of things happening that never made it onto my tapes.
My mind leaps from the task at hand to what I need at the vegetable stand for tonight’s soup to the threatening rain outside to ideas voiced in my writ-ing group this morning, but in between “distractions” I hear myself trying out words I might use.
It’s as if the extraneous thoughts are a counter-point to the more steady attention I’m giving to composing.
This is all to point out that the process is more complex than I’m aware of, but I think my tapes reveal certain basic patterns that I tend to follow.
— Anne, New York City Teach
Anne is a teacher of writing. In 1979, she was among a group of twenty teachers who were taking a course in research and basic writing at New York University.’ One of the assignments in the course was for the teachers to tape their thoughts while composing aloud on the topic, “My Most Anxious Moment as a Writer.” Everyone in the group was given the topic in the morning during class and told to compose later on that day in a place where they would be comfortable and relatively free from distractions. The result was a tape of composing aloud and a written product that formed the basis for class discussion over the next few days.
One of the purposes of this assignment was to provide teachers with an opportunity to see their own composing processes at work. From the start of the course, we recognized that we were controlling the situation by assigning a topic and that we might be altering the process by asking writers to compose aloud. Nonetheless we viewed the task as a way of capturing some of the flow of composing and, as Anne later observed in her analysis of her tape, she was able to detect certain basic patterns. This observation, made not only by Anne, then leads me to ask “What basic patterns seem to occur during composing?” and “What does this type of research have to tell us about the nature of the composing process?”
how can reading primary/secondary sources be evident in the recursive process?
Perhaps the most challenging part of the answer is the recognition of re-cursiveness in writing. In recent years, many researchers including myself have questioned the traditional notion that writing is a linear process with a strict plan-write-revise sequence.”n its stead, we have advocated the idea that writing is a recursive process, that throughout the process of writing, writers return to substrands of the overall process, or subroutines (short successions of steps that yield results on which the writer draws in taking the next set of steps); writers use these to keep the process moving forward. In other words, recursiveness in writing implies that there is a forward-moving action that exists by virtue of a backward-moving action. The questions that then need to be answered are, “To what do writers move back?” “What exactly is being repeated?” “What recurs?”
To answer these questions, it is important to look at what writers do while writing and what an analysis of their processes reveals. The descriptions that follow are based on my own observations of the composing processes of many types of writers including college students, graduate students, and English teachers like Anne.
Writing does appear to be recursive, yet the parts that recur seem to vary from writer to writer and from topic to topic. Furthermore, some recursive elements are easy to spot while others are not.
1) The most visible recurring feature or backward movement involves re-reading little bits of discourse. Few writers I have seen write for long periods of time without returning briefly to what is already down on the page.
For some, like Anne, rereading occurs after every few phrases; for others, it occurs after every sentence; more frequently, it occurs after a “chunk” of information has been written. Thus, the unit that is reread is not necessarily a syntactic one, but rather a semantic one as defined by the writer.
2) The second recurring feature is some keyword or item called up by the topic. Writers consistently return to their notion of the topic throughout the process of writing. Particularly when they are stuck, writers seem to use the topic or a keyword in it as a way to get going again. Thus many times it is possible to see writers “going back,” rereading the topic they were given, changing it to suit what they have been writing or changing what they have written to suit their notion of the topic.
3) There is also a third backward movement in writing, one that is not so easy to document. It is not easy because the move, itself, cannot immediately be identified with words. In fact, the move is not to any words on the page nor to the topic but to feelings or non-verbalized perceptions that surround the words, or to what the words already present evoke in the writer. The move draws on sense experience, and it can be observed if one pays close attention to what happens when writers pause and seem to listen or otherwise react to what is inside of them. The move occurs inside the writer, to what is physically felt. The term used to describe this focus of writers’ attention is felt sense. The term “felt sense” has been coined and described by Eugene Gendlin, a philosopher at the University of Chicago. In his words, felt sense is
the soft underbelly of thought . . . a kind of bodily awareness that . . . can be used as a tool . . . a bodily awareness that … encompasses everything you feel and know about a given subject at a given time…. It is felt in the body, yet it has meanings. It is body and mind before they are split apart.
This felt sense is always there, within us. It is unifying, and yet, when we bring words to it, it can break apart, shift, unravel, and become something else. Gendlin has spent many years showing people how to work with their felt sense. Here I am making connections between what he has done and what I have seen happen as people write.
When writers are given a topic, the topic itself evokes a felt sense in them. This topic calls forth images, words, ideas, and vague fuzzy feelings that are anchored in the writer’s body. What is elicited, then, is not solely the product of a mind but of a mind alive in a living, sensing body.
When writers pause, when they go back and repeat keywords, what they seem to be doing is waiting, paying attention to what is still vague and unclear. They are looking to their felt experience, and waiting for an image, a word, or a phrase to emerge that captures the sense they embody.
Usually, when they make the decision to write, it is after they have a dawning awareness that something has clicked, that they have enough of a sense that if they begin with a few words heading in a certain direction, words will continue to come which will allow them to flesh out the sense they have.
The process of using what is sensed directly about a topic is a natural one. Many writers do it without any conscious awareness that that is what they are doing. For example, Anne repeats the words “anxious moments,” using these keywords as a way of allowing her sense of the topic to deepen. She asks herself, “Why are exams so anxiety provoking?” and waits until she has enough of a sense within her that she can go in a certain direction. She does not yet have the words, only the sense that she is able to begin. Once she writes, she stops to see what is there. She maintains a highly recursive com-posing style throughout and she seems unable to go forward without first going back to see and to listen to what she has already created. In her own words, she says:
My disjointed style of composing is very striking to me. I almost never move from the writing of one sentence directly to the next. After each sentence I pause to read what I’ve written, assess, sometimes edit and think about what will come next. I often have to read the several preceding sentences a few times as if to gain momentum to carry me to the next sentence. I seem to depend a lot on the sound of my words and... while I’m hanging in the middle of this uncompleted thought, I may also start editing a previous sentence or get an inspiration for something which I want to include later in the paper.
What tells Anne that she is ready to write? What is the feeling of “momentum” like for her? What is she hearing as she listens to the “sound” of her words? When she experiences “inspiration,” how does she recognize it?
In the approach I am presenting, the ability to recognize what one needs to do or where one needs to go is informed by calling on felt sense. This is the internal criterion writers seem to use to guide them when they are planning, drafting, and revising.
The recursive move, then, that is hardest to document but is probably the most important to be aware of is the move to felt sense, to what is not yet in words but out of which images, words, and concepts emerge.
The continuing presence of this felt sense, waiting for us to discover it and see where it leads, raises a number of questions.
Is “felt sense” another term for what professional writers call their “inner voice” or their feeling of “inspiration”?
Do skilled writers call on their capacity to sense more readily than un-skilled writers?
Rather than merely reducing the complex act of writing to a neat formulation, can the term “felt sense” point us to an area of our experience from which we can evolve even richer and more accurate descriptions of composing?
Can learning how to work with felt sense teach us about creativity and release us from stultifyingly repetitive patterns?
My observations lead me to answer “yes” to all four questions. There seems to be a basic step in the process of composing that skilled writers rely on even when they are unaware of it and that less skilled writers can be taught. This process seems to rely on very careful attention to one’s inner reflections and is often accompanied with bodily sensations.
When it’s working, this process allows us to say or write what we’ve never said before, to create something new and fresh, and occasionally it provides us with the experience of “newness” or “freshness,” even when “old words” or images are used.
The basic process begins with paying attention. If we are given a topic, it begins with taking the topic in and attending to what it evokes in us. There is less “figuring out” an answer and more “waiting” to see what forms. Even without a predetermined topic, the process remains the same. We can ask ourselves, “What’s on my mind?” or “Of all the things I know about, what would I most like to write about now?” and wait to see what comes. What we pay attention to is the part of our bodies where we experience ourselves directly. For many people, it’s the area of their stomachs; for others, there is a more generalized response and they maintain a hovering attention to what they experience throughout their bodies.
Once a felt sense forms, we match words to it. As we begin to describe it, we get to see what is there for us. We get to see what we think, what we know. If we are writing about something that truly interests us, the felt sense deepens. We know that we are writing out of a “centered” place.
If the process is working, we begin to move along, sometimes quickly. Other times, we need to return to the beginning, to reread, to see if we captured what we meant to say. Sometimes after rereading we move on again, picking up speed. Other times by rereading we realize we’ve gone off the track, that what we’ve written doesn’t quite “say it,” and we need to reassess. Sometimes the words are wrong and we need to change them. Other times we need to go back to the topic, to call up the sense it initially evoked to see where and how our words led us astray. Sometimes in re-reading, we discover that the topic is “wrong,” that the direction we discovered in writing is where we really want to go. It is important here to clarify that the terms “right” and “wrong” are not necessarily meant to refer to grammatical structures or to correctness.
What is “right” or “wrong” corresponds to our sense of our intention? We intend to write something, words come, and now we assess if those words adequately capture our intended meaning. Thus, the first question we ask ourselves is “Are these words right for me?” ” Do they capture what I’m trying to say?” “If not, what’s missing?”
Once we ask “what’s missing?” we need once again to wait, to let a felt sense of what is missing, and then to write out of that sense.
I have labeled this process of attending, of calling up a felt sense, and of writing out of that place, the process of retrospective structuring. It is retrospective in that it begins with what is already there, inchoately, and brings whatever is there forward by using language in structured form.
It seems as though a felt sense has within it many possible structures or forms. As we shape what we intend to say, we are further structuring our sense while correspondingly shaping our piece of writing.
It is also important to note that what is there implicitly, without words, is not equivalent to what finally emerges. In the process of writing, we begin with what is inchoate and end with something that is tangible. In order to do so, we both discover and construct what we mean. Yet the term “discovery” ought not lead us to think that meaning exists fully formed inside of us and that all we need do is dig deep enough to release it. In writing, meaning cannot be discovered the way we discover an object on an archeological dig. In writing, meaning is crafted and constructed. It involves us in a process of coming-into-being. Once we have worked at shaping, through language, what is there inchoately, we can look at what we have written to see if it adequately captures what we intended. Often at this moment discovery occurs. We see something new in our writing that comes upon us as a surprise. We see in our words a further structuring of the sense we began with and we recognize that in those words we have discovered something new about ourselves and our topic. Thus when we are successful at this process, we end up with a product that teaches us something, that clarifies what we know (or what we knew at one point only implicitly), and that lifts out or explicates or enlarges our experience. In this way, writing leads to discovery.
I had a similar thought in the article I read. There I commented that I am often reminded that writing is thinking. We come to “know” the things we want to communicate through the drafting and revising process/
All the writers I have observed, skilled and unskilled alike, use the process of retrospective structuring while writing. Yet the degree to which they do so varies and seems, in fact, to depend upon the model of the writing process that they have internalized. Those who realize that writing can be a recursive process have an easier time with waiting, looking, and discovering. Those who subscribe to the linear model find themselves easily frustrated when what they write does not immediately correspond to what they planned or when what they produce leaves them with little sense of accomplishment. Since they have relied on a formulaic approach, they often produce writing that is formulaic as well, thereby cutting themselves off from the possibility of discovering something new.
Such a result seems linked to another feature of the composing process, to what I call projective structuring, or the ability to craft what one intends to say so that it is intelligible to others.
A number of concerns arise in regard to projective structuring; I will mention only a few that have been raised for me as I have watched different writers at work.
1) Although projective structuring is only one important part of the composing process, many writers act as if it is the whole process. These writers focus on what they think others want them to rite rather than looking to see what it is they want to write. As a result, they often ignore their felt sense and they do not establish a living connection between themselves and their topic.
2) Many writers reduce projective structuring to a series of rules or criteria for evaluating finished discourse. These writers ask, “Is what I’m writing correct?” and “Does it conform to the rules I’ve been taught?” While these concerns are important, they often overshadow all others and lock the writer in the position of writing solely or primarily for the approval of readers.
Projective structuring, as I see it, involves much more than imagining a strict audience and maintaining a strict focus on correctness. It is true that to handle this part of the process well, writers need to know certain grammatical rules and evaluative criteria, but they also need to know how to call up a sense of their reader’s needs and expectations.
For projective structuring to function fully, writers need to draw on their capacity to move away from their own words, to decenter from the page, and to project themselves into the role of the reader. In other words, projective structuring asks writers to attempt to become readers and to imagine what someone other than themselves will need before the writer’s particular piece of writing can become intelligible and compelling. To do so, writers must have the experience of being readers. They cannot call up a felt sense of a reader unless they themselves have experienced what it means to be lost in a piece of writing or to be excited by it. When writers do not have such experiences, it is easy for them to accept that readers merely require correct-ness.
In closing, I would like to suggest that retrospective and projective structuring are two parts of the same basic process. Together they form the alternating mental postures writers assume as they move through the act of composing. The former relies on the ability to go inside, to attend to what is there, from that attending to place words upon a page, and then to assess if those words adequately capture one’s meaning. The latter relies on the ability to assess how the words on that page will affect someone other than the writer, the reader. We rarely do one without the other entering in; in fact, again in these postures we can see the shuttling back-and-forth movements of the composing process, the move from sense to words and from words to sense, from inner experience to outer judgment and from judgment back to experience. As we move through this cycle, we are continually composing and recomposing our meanings and what we mean. And in doing so, we display some of the basic recursive patterns that writers who observe them-selves closely seem to see in their own work. After observing the process for a long time we may, like Anne, conclude that at any given moment the process is more complex than anything we are aware of; yet such insights, I believe, are important. They show us the fallacy of reducing the composing process to a simple linear scheme and they leave us with the potential for creating even more powerful ways of understanding composing.
Notes
1. L. S. Vygotsky, 1.11nd it? Soriet~~,trans. M. Cole, V. John-Sreiner, S. Scribner, and E. Souberman (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 61.
2 . This course was team-taught by myself and Gordon Pradl, Associare Professor of English Education ar New York University.
3. See Janet Emig, The Conposing Proresses of Twelfrh-Graders, NCTE Research Report No. 1 3 (Urbana, Ill: National Council of Teachers of English, 1971); Linda Flower and J . R. Hayes, “The Cognition of Discovery,” CCC, 31 (February, 1980), 21-32; Nancy Sommers, “The Need for Theory in Composition Research,” CCC, 30 (February, 1979), 46-4
4. Eugene Gendlin, Focusing (New York: Everesr House, 19781, pp. 35, 165.
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