How We Argue: Writing Reflecting in Reverse

I've set myself up for a difficult task here.

I'm asking my students to compose one reflective text for each of their writing projects in their portfolios. So, I'm providing them with a sample in which I do the thing I'm asking them to do. Only fair, right?

Shortly after I filed my dissertation

Writing a brief reflective introduction to something I wrote shouldn't be difficult, but I've made it difficult for myself. I'm reflecting on my dissertation: a large writing project that by the most conservative standards took five years for me to complete.

Why? Why would I pick that for this sample reflection?

Well, that word "complete" is a major factor here.

All of my writing is in varying stages of completeness, but this dissertation is the most complete text I've ever produced. I filed it with my university and said, "That's it. That is the final draft."

I'm asking my students to submit artifacts to their portfolios as "final drafts" (along with links to earlier drafts). So it's only fair that the most "final" draft I've produced to date should serve as my portfolio sample.

Now, if I selected this text because it has reached the final stage of the writing process, maybe that's where I should begin this reflection.

If I'm starting at the end,

then I suppose I should share the final draft here
at the begining...

See, now that's weird. Just throwing the link to the final draft on the page and saying, "There it is!"

Doing that feels too easy. It was a huge process getting the thing done, which makes me want to tell the story behind the text, and I suppose that's what this reflection is meant to be...

And while it's nice to have this reflective space, it is not how most texts are experienced, right? People see the final product first.

So, I'm writing this reflection in reverse...

Publication Stage

Just getting through the final stages of writing took so much longer than I thought. My committee had already signed off on the thing, which felt final, but there was still a ton to do.
I wanted to generate a table of contents, a list of tables, and a list of diagrams.
I wanted to dedicate it to my wife and kids.
I wanted to write up my acknowledgements.
I needed to get the pagination right.
I needed to convert it to a PDF.
I needed to submit it electronically for approval from grad studies.
I got all that done, but I will admit, actually going through the publication stage is very different from thinking about the publication stage.

Editing Stage

Editing happened a lot during the writing process. I tend to complete a rough edit as I go, because every time I sat down to write, I had to read my way back into the project. I would fix and tinker with the text as I did this.

But the later stages of editing felt important. Let me tell you one reason why.

Last spring the editor of Writing on the Edge David Masiel invited me to join him in an interview with Professor Kathleen Blake Yancey. I admire Professor Yancey and her work a great deal. Her most recent book, Writing Across Contexts, played an important role in my writing. I told her that after the interview. To which she responded: "Oh that's great. I look forward to reading it."

And that's when it really hit me. I was going to be producing a text for readers who A) are smarter and more accomplished than I am (e.g. my dissertation committee) and B) are potentially people who haven't read my work before.

I checked and re-checked things I hadn't really thought about in previous writings: the formatting of my diagrams and charts (especially the captions), the amount of times I used words I tend to overuse such as "however" (used 64 times in the final draft), paragraph indents, where pages ended, chapter numbering, and a bunch of other stuff.

I followed that with one last round of proofreading using Microsoft's 'text-to-speech' feature (highly recommended, btw).

Then the last step in editing was checking all of my references, making sure the in-text citations were clear and making sure the reference list was complete.

Revision Stage

This took for-f-ing-ever.

Even while I was drafting new chapters -- no, especially while I was drafting new chapters, I would have to go back and cut, reshape, move, or rewrite earlier passages. Then when I was done with the full first draft, I knew there was still a ton of re-working to do.

One writing-process choice sticks out: I would sit down and write for a while only to realize what I was working on didn't belong in the chapter or section I was drafting; it actually belonged in a section I hadn't yet written. So, while I was writing, there were always three or four paragraphs of to-be-placed material underneath where I was typing.

Then came reader feedback. I shared my work with Professor Dana Ferris first. She pointed out underdeveloped arguments and places where I mistakenly assumed my reader knew the literature as well as I did. I worked to address this while Professors Carl Whithaus and Lee Martin read. Their feedback helped me clear up terms and the theoretical framework.

I can't stress enough how much the feedback from experts moved the work forward. They are the ones who helped me understand how to re-shape my ideas for a broader community of scholars.

Drafting Stage

This was messy. I spent months on the literature review, because my understanding of the literature is how I aimed to demonstrate a clear theoretical framework. So, I needed to work through that before writing up how I collected and analyzed any data. But I had to write up a proposal and submit it to IRB before that, and the proposal locked me into an agreement with the university on how I would proceed.

Yeah. This was messy. I'd love to provide a neat telling of the drafting, but my drafting process won't cooperate.

I blocked off hours of the day. Some days were productive. Some days were a total loss.

It's hard to write that last sentence. I have a wonderful wife and two great kids, and admitting that some days in my office were a waste makes me feel guilty.

But I'm not sure I would have completed the work without those days. Tiny but important breakthroughs happened at odd moments, and those led to the whole.

Pre-writing

I feel like this started years before I started grad school. In fact, my first chapter names 2004 as the year this project started.

My six years as a teacher in Budapest contributed to the shaping of this. My course work during the first three years of grad school was tremendously influential. My time at Transfer Camp got me ready to write.

In short, the project was so big that it is difficult to pinpoint where it began, but it did begin.

And now it's done.