Scribbles and drafts (affective dimensions of writing)

I can remember in elementary school having to write probably 4 or more drafts of a paper in order to finally get it to the point that I could turn it into my teacher for final grading.  This frustrated me like no other!  Why in the world was I punished because I either had bad handwriting or I scribbled something out on my paper and then had to rewrite it?  Writing came easy to me.  Yet when it came to writing, especially handwriting, a polished copy of a paper or story it took me forever to get it right. 

I never had much problems with motivation to write throughout school.  Like I said, it came pretty easily.  I had a robust vocabulary, could spell pretty well (3rd grade Wells Elementary Spelling Bee Champ) and my self efficacy was pretty high from good family and teacher support.  Nevertheless, when it came time to write a polished paper, I hated writing multiple drafts.  Things improved more as I learned how to type on a computer and had the ability type up reports in junior high and high school.  There was this great thing called the backspace which allowed me to screw up and then fix it right away.  I can remember in particular some writing assignments in high school English where we were supposed to have many revisions of a paper.  Instead of doing that, I would spend quite a bit of time on my first draft in the hopes that it might be good enough to be my final draft with maybe a couple revisions. 

Writing about things I know or things that I can research are by far my favorite forms of writing.  None of this, "Write a poem about your favorite holiday" or "Develop a fictional short story" went very well for me.  I am far too concrete sequential for that.  Now, I will be honest and say that some of my ideas can get pretty abstract but I was never able to write down these ideas in a manner that makes sense to me or others so I usually avoid it. 

In the present, my favorite forms of writing come from writing again, about information that I know or can research.  However, I have become a little more "flavorful" in my writing because I really enjoy writing my opinion and not having every aspect of my writing critiqued as in a final research paper.  I rarely get on facebook but when I do, it is usually to write some smart-alec comment or update on something I have been doing.  I think social media is a great way to get people writing these days!  When we are on social media, it feels easy to write and since normal conventions "r thrwn oute the windo" there is little pressure to perform a certain way.  We need more of this type of writing.

I am sure every student is not going to have my same experience with writing.  Some are probably going to have loved writing and then been hammered so hard on conventions that they grew to dislike it.  Others probably will not have liked it from the beginning.  And there will be those who love everything to do with writing.  I believe that providing a low-critique environment on writing is probably the best way to work with writing in my discipline.  Obviously there will be times when polished writing is called for, however, when that is the case it should be a process of getting there not just expecting the first thing they write to be that polished product.  Additionally, as was talked about in class, we can use some of these social media aspects to get students more involved in writing while doing it in an environment they are comfortable.  The hard part is making it so the writing is really social and we are not just using it as a medium for "old school writing." I firmly believe writing is an important skill for students to develop in order to succeed after high school.  However, not all writing has to be graded and the writing that does need a grade can be revised and polished as a process.  My experiences have taught me that the best way to accomplish writing in class it to make it low stress, give the students many choices so they have  the opportunity to write something they feel comfortable with, and make writing polished papers a process so it does not feel so stressful to write.