College Writing (ENGLWRIT 112)

Writer’s Notebook

The Writer’s Notebook serves as a “place” where the beginning stages of writing (generating, trying out ideas, etc.) can be emphasized since it is this initial writing that frequently gets the least attention in other venues. Yet published writers report that one of the few “constants” of their practice is that most write daily and all write often, frequently producing pages and pages of material that will never go further than their notebooks or ever be read by anyone but the writer. Although it’s difficult to mirror such daily practice in a classroom, the writer's notebook seeks to emphasize the central role that low-stakes (i.e. ungraded, private, experimental) writing plays in a working writer’s thought processes. As a place where students will do most of their generative writing (i.e. the first step in our four-step process) and their journal writing (i.e. private writing), the notebook provides a space for the kinds of continual, open writing that writers see as central to generating their thinking and experimenting with their style. The notebook provides a single space where writers can continually return for new ideas and/or a reminder of the material they had hoped to include while drafting.