Nancy Sommers Writing Process Analysis

Nancy Sommers sets forth a criteria in her essay “Revision strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers” which all writers are classified into two types of writers, student writers and experienced writers. She gives each a set of characteristics used to classify writers. She explains that student writers always feel the need for constant revision and when they revise they mostly use methods such as deletion, substitution, addition and reordering. Conversely, experienced writers envision their readers and use a first draft as a way to figure out what their argument is what they want to say about it. She says that experienced writers seek meaning in the engagement and that she has found that is much more effective. While this classification system provides a great guideline I do not believe that most writers fit neatly into either category. A perfect example of this is Thomas Osborne.
Osborne has a very unique writing style and starts off his essay “Late Nights, Last Rites, and the Rain-Slick Road to Self-Destruction” talking about how he has been struggling to write this essay for four days and then states “I just erased several dozen hours of hard work from existence.” (Osborne 648). If you were to just stop reading here, given Sommers …show more content…
Osborne is a great example of someone who defies this set criteria. His writing process has criteria that fits in both spectrums and therefore prevents him from being placed into any single group. Osborne himself would most likely agree that his writing style is very unique and can not be classified into a standard style or writing. Osborne has a very unique writing style and as a result also has very unique revision strategies. Writing is very creative in nature and every person has their own unique voice in writing. Subsequently such a uniform classification can not be solely used to determine a writer 's experience