Your Elementary Pupil and the Writer's Cycle of Craft (Fall 1969)

Process is not really a "thing" yet...
Conference teaching is not really mentioned

A few things I notice write away in the opening paragraph:

The publishing writer--novelist, scientist, historian, journalist, scholar, adman, poet--passes through an identifiable cycle of craft, a ritual of process which has significant implications for the elementary language arts program. Quite simply, your pupils can learn to write much more effectively if they are led to experience the writer's cycle of craft. (3)

1. The writing process is the same for all kinds of writers.
2. the argument: "your pupils can learn to write much more effectively if they are led to experience the writer's cycle of craft" (later: "follow the example of the pros").

The unexplainable art of writing:

"the myth of arts is real--there is something unexplainable in the skill of a Milton or a Mailer, a Lowell or a Train." (3)

Craft and Art

Master writers are craftsmen before they are artists. (3)

The writing process can be studied. There is an extensive bibliography of books on writing from the writer's point of view... Students of writing have a vast resource of writers' journals, letters, autobiographies and manuscript pages which document how writers write.

Yet, despite such evidence, we rarely build our language arts curriculum on what most expert writers have had to learn and practice. (3)

Jab at Teachers and Conventional Teaching: "There is another impolitic, painful fact which must be mentioned: the most conscientious and traditional teacher may be the worst writing teacher. The teacher who sees himself teaching in the most conventional way--telling his pupils exactly what to do, giving precise assignments, meticulously correcting each paper--may actually prevent his students from learning to write. (4)

The pupil will not want or need a reader until he has entered into the writer's cycle of craft. (4)

MM: The article then goes on to break the cycle of craft into pre-writing, writing, rewriting. This was 1969, this was not the first time someone proposed this, was it???

Writing is a Lifelong Learning Process

This all takes time. For the professional writer it can take a lifetime, since writing is never learned, it is practiced. (5)

Prewriting:

This is surprising: Prewriting is not a simple one-two-three process. The elements of prewriting change in emphasis and order, but before the professional writer completes his first draft he has attempted to find a subject, to summon the information which will support his subject and to choose the vehicle which will carry it to his reader. He has identified his audience; developed a feeling for the appropriate structure and tone and point of view. (5)

Writing

Rewriting

I made notes in another document...Ch. 3 Notes and Murray and TCs...

Coming back later (10/29):

I'm thinking about when the phrase writing process began to gain currency and what role Murray had in its doing so. In this article, the title doesn't mention process, explicitly. It's focused on "the writer's cycle of craft" and "cycle of craft" is, of course, another way of thinking about process.

But Murray does use the word or phrase writing process numerous times throughout this piece. Whether he's doing so intentionally, as he later does with his piece "Teach the Writing Process..." I'm not sure, but I don't think "process" has yet become a "thing" in 1969 when he published this.

He uses the term "process" in the very first line. "The publishing writer--novelist, scientist, historian, journalist, scholar, adman, poet--passes through an identifiable cycle of craft, a ritual of process which has significant implications for the elementary language arts program." (3)

Later, "The writing process can be studied." (3)

His primary criticism here is about HOW writing is taught, "backwards" he says: "The writing program is often created backwards, from the process of reading or from what we discover by examining language which has already been written. These neat, well-intentioned programs often have little to do with the actual process--or practice--of writing. (3-4)