Blog 2: Author's Craft

While reading Tompkins chapter on writer’s craft, I began to think about the way that I learned how to write in school. Tompkins (2019) explains the elements of writers craft as: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation.  I remember my teachers taking a lot of time talking about the elements ideas, organization and conventions but not talking about the other 4 elements.  They did multiple mini lessons on the importance of brainstorming an idea and then organizing your information for the idea before writing it. They would always tell us to look back at our writing to correct any errors we had in our writing but never had us specifically look at the words we choose, the voice we used of how the sentence flowed.  I can now see how that experience has impacted me as I write now.

The idea and organization elements are fairly easy elements for me to understand whether it’s writing or reading. I always take the time to think of the ideas I want to write about before I start to write them. I sometimes find it difficult to figure out the idea of an article when reading digitally because there can be a lot of information that might not be related to what the topic is about. While reading digitally, the author might include hyperlinks that take you to another page that gives you more back ground information on the topic they are writing about. While that is useful, I feel like it makes it harder for me to have a concrete idea of what the text is about. While reading traditional text, I don’t have to worry about switching to another source and getting distracted. I was taught that your ideas should flow together so that the reader can easily move through your writing. I will admit that now days I tend to do the organization part after I have written my entire paper. I find it easier to see the organization element within traditional text since the ideas are usually separated into paragraphs, pages, or chapters. In digital text, the only way to switch an idea is by having them in separate paragraphs. I occasionally find it hard to see where one paragraph ends and where one starts. This makes it hard to know if they are talking about the same idea or switching to a new one.   

I find voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions to be a little difficult when it comes to writing. I always struggle to find the right words to use or the right sentence to say. I can usually recognize the elements while I am reading. I find an article to be more interesting and easier to read if it has a variety of words and I can hear the voice of the author. I will admit that I am not a strong speller and so when I first start writing I don’t worry about spelling and conventions. While I reread my writing at the end, I take the time to fix any errors I might have. I have a hard time reading both traditional and digital text if there are a lot of conventional errors in the writing. My eyes will go straight to the error and I won’t understand anything that I read.

The publishing element is an element that I try to use as much as possible. After I am done with the actual writing part, I spend some time with layout to figure out how I want my writing to look. The way my writing looks depend on what I’ve wrote about and who the audience is. I think the way a piece or writing is shown says a lot about the author’s personality. No matter if I’m reading traditional text or if I am reading digital text, take the time to notice how the author is displaying their writing.

I think that there are some students just like me that haven’t spent time learning all of the elements of author’s craft. Hicks (2013) says, “Even the most skilled readers among our students may not have all the lenses they need to see the ways in which an author constructs a text” (p. 12).  It can be hard for students to go through all the different steps and elements while writing. One thing that I agree with Hicks, is when he says to slow down and work backwards when teaching authors craft.  When I teach author’s craft, I will make sure to teach each element at a slow pace so that the students will be able to practice each element.

Hicks, T. (2013).  Crafting digital writing.  Portsmouth, NH:  Heinemann.

Lambert, K. Helping students find “voice” in their writing. Education world, connecting educators to what works. https://www.educationworld.com/helping-students-find-%E2%80%9Cvoice%E2%80%9D-their-writing

Julian, S. (2018). Digital texts and reading strategies. Tips and trend instructional technologies committee. https://acrl.ala.org/IS/wp-content/uploads/Tips-and-Trends-Sp18.pdf

Tompkins, G. E.  (2019).  Teaching writing:  Balancing process and product (7^th ed.).  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Merrill.