Peter Elbow's Ideas On The Process Of Writing: Analysis

In the quote from Writing Without Teachers, Peter Elbow talks about his ideas on the process of writing. He says, “think of writing as an organic, developmental process in which you start writing at the very beginning – before you know your meaning at all – and encourage your words gradually to change and evolve” (Elbow). Elbow believes that you can’t know what you are going to discuss or to comment on until you are done writing and all of your thoughts finally come together to make sense. He also goes against the idea that writing is only a two-step process, saying that this is the wrong method to go about writing and is a backwards way of thinking. I agree with Elbow’s ideas because this is how I think about the writing process, and is how I write most of the time. I think that this quote also describes how you improve your writing …show more content…
One of my biggest problems is procrastination. As I stated in my first paper, I start my writing process “with procrastination, something I do often that uses most of my time…I just can’t get myself to focus on writing that well” (“Is There a Right Way?”). It delays me from getting into my writing, which could probably be a lot better than it is right now if I could get myself to concentrate. Procrastination also doesn’t give me enough time to really think about the assignment, what it’s asking of me, what I think about it, and what I could talk about. Another change necessary to improve my writing, is that I need to better consider all the ideas in my first drafts so that I can try to expand and connect them, and to find the best ideas for what I’m trying to say. This could change the main ideas of my writing from draft to draft, but the final paper would turn out much better than before. I am getting better at considering all the ideas in my writing, but this skill could definitely be developed