Donald Murray and Janet Emig (and I) Talk Writing

I like Emig's idea that talking is pre-writing. I have always been a poor conversationalist, preferring to organize my ideas slowly, prepare them visually, scratch out, erase, or delete the words that fail to express the meaning I wish to convey and replace them with more fitting words. I never feel like a conversation allows me to say much of anything significant, although I don't think it's impossible for everyone. I am just a careful and patient thinker, wishing that I could explain my thought processes and conclusions, well, more thoughtfully and conclusively -- and this is why I hesitate. I hate thinking on my toes, knowing I can't effectively reach for some distantly related memory (I always lose people in conversation, working my way to a point I feel is coming, but my listeners often can't) and arrive at a perfect full circle conclusion. Even in a blog, I feel like I am not crafting my thoughts so carefully as I would for a paper. I feel more loose, slangy, laid back. I feel like I am talking, in a sense, "not to say that writing is talk recorded" but more that pre-writing might be (Emig 123). I feel like this is pre-writing.

While Emig discusses more the inner realm of learning and its nature as developed physically, psychologically, and socially, Murray argues more for respect for good writing professors and students and writing as an intellectual, honest, and satisfying pursuit. He claims that writing is a powerful tool for self-discovery and thinks it vital that students of writing are able to write as they think and "read their own words to find out what they've said and decide how to say it more effectively" (1235). I think building on this skill in this fashion would improve not only writing capabilities but also self-consideration and self-expression. He brings up a good point, that "discovery drafts" and failures are necessary to this improvement (1237). It is only through self-evaluation, he argues that we even make way in our brains for these improvements to be made. I find a lot of personal truth in these ideas.

Lastly, I would like to add a quote that resounded for me: "Writing as a mode is inherently more self-reliant than speaking" (Emig 127). Perhaps I prefer writing because I like to consider myself fairly self-reliant, or perhaps it is because of that self-reliance that I developed my writing skills more seriously than my speaking ones. What do you think of this relationship? Causation? Correlation? Coincidence?