Teaching Writing as a Process Not Product, Donald M. Murray

I love Murray's language when describing writing, "continual excitement" (4), "coaches, encouragers, developers, creators" (5). He sounds like a teacher of writing who loves writing AND teaching.

Teaching writing in it's "glory and it's unfinishedness" (4) is a great theory. How many times have we, as accomplished writers, revisited something written in the past, only to think, "I could have said that this way," or "what was I thinking there?" I am constantly trying to impress upon my students the beauty of revising.

I do wonder about Murray's breakdown of writing time (85% prewriting, 1% writing, 14% revising [4]). This may be the breakdown for accomplished writers, but I see a very different breakdown from my own students. Left to their own devices, I can estimate a best case 10% prewriting, 88% writing, 2% editing. So often, students finish writing and can't wait to get it out of their hands. No matter how many times I nag, "Did you edit? Are all your sentences complete? Do you have juicy language? Did you, did you did you...?", students still give a quick skim and move on. This drives me batty. I personally love editing, it's the easiest part. You take what you already wrote and make it better. I try to impress this upon my students, and they try (or pretend to try), but they are so focused on the closure that is turning their papers in, they still only half-heartedly edit/revise.

For me, I need a little more of an answer to Murray's own question "How do you motivate you student to pass through the process, perhaps even pass through it again and again on the same piece of writing?" Is there a magic answer? If so, someone let me it on it.