Kathy Greethurst talks about her writing process
Summary of video content
Mary Deane asks Kathy Greethurst, a Staff Development Consultant in OCSLD, to talk about her writing process.
Kathy discusses her process for academic document, using the example of a recent book review.
She read the book, took notes, bearing the review in mind. She thought about what she liked and found compelling and any shortcomings, and the things she learnt from the book even though she already knew the subject well.
She pulled those notes together, made a plan for organising the review:
- intro with a hint of what she thought
- summary of what was in it, what was good, shortcomings
- conclusion
Kathy says she tends to just try and write as much as she can and edit afterwards.
The writing process is very important to her. She loves words, and what makes writing interesting is putting together a compelling message, getting her point of view across in as few words as possible. It’s also the challenge: getting words down and being as clear, succinct and persuasive as possible.
She writes several drafts, with perhaps four or five different versions, and each version becomes better and better, a process she really enjoys.
Mary summarises that as an interesting recursive process - generating ideas, planning, back to thinking about ideas, drafting, revising the focus, back to drafting, revising, drafting. The process creates several versions, enriching the final argument and article.
Mary then asks Kathy about her biggest challenge in the whole of writing process
Kathy says she gets stuck on particular sentences so spends time with particular sentences which she's enjoying working with or is finding particularly challenging, which can inhibit her from moving on. In writing an essay she can get stuck on the introduction and not move any further forward because she's enjoying perfecting that first paragraph.
She initially thought about changing her process and writing down all her ideas and references from reading, but that’s too far removed from her natural way of doing it. She's currently experimenting with a process where when doing reading and research she starts writing relevant paragraphs which could fit into the essay. She’s got an overall idea in her head of the shape of the argument, so she types up the quote from her reading, but wraps it around with text on how this could help support or counter the argument in the essay. This approach is working really well.
