Ibrahim Ali

Professor Mary

Rhet 105

Date: 1/28/17

Word Count: 480

Writing is a Process

In his essay, Adler explained to us how in order to get as much out of a book as possible you must mark it up and make it your own. Adler explains how marking up a book is active reading, which not only helps keep you awake but it helps you understand the points that the author is trying to make and organize your thoughts. Because your thoughts are more organized when you mark up a book with notes, you can formulate your own arguments against the author or agree with them.

When actively reading, you absorb the information that the author is giving you and can learn and recall it much better compared to if you did not mark up the book with notes. Adler states that physically writing something makes you much more likely to remember it. Writing important ideas that the author or you might have not only makes you more likely to remember them but helps you understand different aspects of the book much more deeply. Adler tells us about how circling words, scribbling notes and bookmarking pages in books helps us get more information out of them. Anne Lemott in Shitty First Drafts tells us about how nobody is a perfect writer and it isn’t always easy to translate our thoughts from our minds to paper.

Even the most talented and revered writers have trouble forming elegant sentences. Anne Lemott elaborates on how we must let out ideas flow freely without a filter, and how doing so makes formulating ideas much clearer. She talks about personal experiences where she would not be able to write a proper review because she would not be able to write a proper header or lead. From my own personal experience, I also tried multiple times where I would attempt to write a paper in one sitting and failed. I would just be random, unorganized thoughts all over the place. When I began to write first and second drafts and just allow all of my ideas to freely flow, my writing became much better and more organized.

I now firmly believe in the writing process of creating multiple drafts. Sometimes I will just write anything that comes to me when I can’t think of what I should write about. It is always easier to write about something that you are passionate about. Ray Bradbury reminded us of this in the video in which he talked about how he wrote Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury described it as the characters telling him how to write themselves. When writing about something that you truly care about, it seems effortless, and I fully believe that statement as it is no longer a job or task at that point it is passion and love.