Zack DePiero and Ryan Dippre
Volume 5
Chapter Description
The writing process is often oversimplified as a series of linear steps: brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. While this notion enables students, like you, to conceptualize writing as something that improves over time, it also conceals the chaos of writing and its social, emotional, and material messiness. To capture some of that messiness, this intentionally unconventional chapter unfolds in three parts. Part 1 offers Zack’s still-in-process draft alongside his “self-talk”—an inner monologue that reveals a range of indecisive and conflicted thoughts passing through his mind as he works through his essay. The essay, itself, explores how writing is shaped by the rhetorical situation, first-order and second-order thinking, a writer’s identity, genre conventions, and source usage. At the end of Part 1, Zack offers a “Top 10” list of revision and editing strategies that can help you work through the writing process. Part 2 illustrates how writers give feedback to other writers: Ryan provides constructive feedback for Zack’s revision. Finally, in Part 3, Zack reacts to Ryan’s feedback, then formulates a revision plan for how he plans to approach his next draft.
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Writing Spaces is published in partnership with Parlor Press and WAC Clearinghouse.