Writing As Process
Murray deemed writing as a process to discover meaning and develop that discovery by working towards clarifying the meaning. Within this process are three stages—prewriting, writing, and rewriting. With his writing habits in mind, Murray emphasized this process by stating, "Before writing and during writing I see far more than I can record. And the more I see, the more there is to see as I pass from this world to the remembered or imagined world".
Prewriting, Murray contended, should take eighty-five percent of the time dedicated to the writing process. According to Murray, this stage can involve strategies such as brainstorming, organizing, activating prior knowledge, and even daydreaming. Murray recommended using the "discovery draft," similar to Peter Elbow's freewriting in which the writer writes as fast as possible without stopping. Murray believed this process would lead to new discoveries and an element of surprise that is not realized by the writer at first. Once ideas are generated by the writer, then, writing or drafting occurs. As a result, the first-draft is created.
The first-draft is not polished and needs revision (the third part of the process), and because the draft is incomplete, the writing stage of process takes about one percent of the writer's time. Murray insisted that writers should have multiple drafts over the course of the writing process. He urged writers to respect their draft and be open to revision.
The third stage of the writing process involves rewriting. This stage calls on the writer to evaluate what has already been written and determine what changes should be made in delivery and organization through revision. Revision is different from editing in that this stage is not concerned with making grammatical and spelling corrections. Only until the content has been revised through multiple drafts, should editing take place. When editing does occur, Murray recommends reading the essay aloud to edit. Murray believed fourteen percent of writing time should be dedicated to the rewriting stage. As Murray prescribed specific stages and time frames to the writng process, he also believed that the approach to process writing depended on the individual writer. He said of writing, "all writing is experimental".
Read more about this topic: Donald Murray (writer)
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