The Writer’s Practice

Description

“Unique and thorough, Warner’s handbook could turn any determined reader into a regular Malcolm Gladwell.” —Booklist
 
For anyone aiming to improve their skill as a writer, a revolutionary new approach to establishing robust writing practices inside and outside the classroom, from the author of Why They Can’t Write

After a decade of teaching writing using the same methods he’d experienced as a student many years before, writer, editor, and educator John Warner realized he could do better. Drawing on his classroom experience and the most persuasive research in contemporary composition studies, he devised an innovative new framework: a step-by-step method that moves the student through a series of writing problems, an organic, bottom-up writing process that exposes and acculturates them to the ways writers work in the world.

The time is right for this new and groundbreaking approach. The most popular books on composition take a formalistic view, utilizing “templates” in order to mimic the sorts of rhetorical moves academics make. While this is a valuable element of a writing education, there is room for something that speaks more broadly. The Writer’s Practice invites students and novice writers into an intellectually engaging, active learning process that prepares them for a wider range of academic and real-world writing and allows them to become invested and engaged in their own work.“Warner generously offers useful hints for improving nonfiction writing. . . . Warner’s style reads like informal, intelligent conversation founded on a genuine desire to share what he knows, and his helpful book will serve as a trusty companion to writers on their own or in class.”
—Publishers Weekly

“An essential guidebook in or outside the classroom for anyone who wants to think, act, and communicate as a writer.”
—Library Journal

“In this uber-handy guide, veteran rhetorician Warner invites readers to sharpen their written communication skills. . . . The guide is well-organized and extremely readable, infused with the perfect amount of Warner’s personality and experiences. Unique and thorough, Warner’s handbook could turn any determined reader into a regular Malcolm Gladwell.”
—Booklist

“In The Writer’s Practice, John Warner invites us on a quest. Quite literally—the book is no passive read, but instead an interactive journey. Warner lays out a map of writing challenges and puzzles (he calls them ‘experiences’), provides tools for the odyssey, and keeps up a friendly, encouraging banter throughout. The experiences stretch one’s writing practice in compelling ways, covering a wide variety of genres and skills. Completed collectively or selectively, the practices would assuredly benefit students, professionals, or anyone who desires to improve their writing.”
—Sarah Rose Cavanagh, Assumption College, author of The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion
  
“Think you can’t write? John Warner disagrees. In his carefully plotted guide to better writing, Warner argues that with focused practice, you CAN improve. So can your students. The Writer’s Practice offers an easy-to-follow series of lessons that, while prompting you to write, build essential writing muscles. An ideal book for anyone new to teaching writing or for aspiring writers keen to improve their craft.”
—Carol Jago, long-time high school English teacher, past president of the National Council of Teachers of English, and associate director of the California Reading and Literature Project, UCLA
 
“A fast and fun guide to what matters in writing (spoiler: attention to audience and purpose), covering everything from academic papers and business reports to travel guides, memoirs, jokes and even obituaries. Warner writes for readers, and they’ll love him for it—plus they’ll learn to do the same.”
—Daniel F. Chambliss, Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Hamilton College, and co-author of How College Works

“With its focus on doing rather than explaining, The Writer’s Practice invites collaboration. Whatever route readers takes through the book (and Warner outlines several possibilities), they will encounter new and challenging authorial tasks, helpfully contextualized. Working through the various sections, writers will practice the “attitudes, skills, habit of mind, and knowledge” that Warner positions as critical to effective writing. The end product will be a sort of co-authored text, reflecting Warner’s goals and methods, and the reader’s effort and growth. Adaptable for classroom use but just as valuable for solo practitioners, The Writer’s Practice is an indispensable guide for writers and instructors alike.”
—Susan Schorn, Writing Program Coordinator, School of Undergraduate Studies, University of Texas–Austin
 
“John Warner’s approach to nonfiction merges his experience as a creative writer and his expertise as a teacher of college composition. Rather than see creative and academic writing as opposed, Warner encourages the aspiring nonfiction writer to adopt a dual perspective: Analytical writing can be like a dialogue. A memory can be held up to the test of research. Too many writing tasks ask the student to regard their writing at a great distance, as if poking something vaguely distasteful or even dangerous. Warner’s book encourages students to bring non-fiction writing closer to them, to embrace its complexity, its challenge, and its importance to their own lives.”
—Catherine Prendergast, Professor, Dept. of English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“Practice? Writer’s practice? Who’s a writer?? You?? Me??? Claiming that everyone is a writer, experienced writer and writing teacher John Warner shares his insights about writing. It’s not magic, but it takes practice—not a list of rules—to write well. He guides novices and even more seasoned writers to think about what they are trying to accomplish, and then how to make it happen. It’s not the usual school-writing, thank goodness, so students and those guiding them will find it refreshing and even, possibly, enlightening. In his I’m-in-love-with-writing approach, Warner can’t be stopped from sharing every trick he’s stumbled upon. We all write. We can all write better. It’s hard, and fun, and will change the way you look at communicating, and possibly the way you think about everything.”
—Susan D. Blum, Professor of Anthropology, The University of Notre Dame
 
“In The Writer’s Practice, writer and writing teacher John Warner confesses: ‘There’s no one right way to write.’ Throughout this how-to volume on nonfiction writing, Warner remains grounded in this paradox by avoiding templates while guiding writers as well as would-be writers and teachers through the questions and problems that all writers navigate in the pursuit of writing well. This book is a gift and everyone learning to write (thus, everyone), or seeking ways to teach writing better, must add this work to their essential bookshelf.”
—P.L. Thomas, professor of Education, Furman University, and author of Trumplandia: Unmasking Post-Truth America and Teaching Writing as Journey, Not Destination: Essays Exploring What “Teaching Writing” Means
 
“While most writing textbooks devote a chapter to the rhetorical situation, John Warner’s The Writer’s Practice is the rare book whose activities center on the idea that good writing responds to the demands of its situation. Presenting a variety of authentic writing tasks, Warner’s book shows students how to adapt their writing to address different audiences, even if that audience is oneself.”
—Chris Warnick, College of CharlestonJohn Warner has more than twenty years’ experience teaching college-level writing, working with a range of students on developmental writing through graduate-level studies. He has taught many different types of writing, from composition, fiction, and narrative nonfiction to technical and humor writing. A contributing writer at Inside Higher Ed, he has become a national voice on writing pedagogy and writes a weekly column on books and reading for the Chicago Tribune. He is the author of five books. An editor-at-large at McSweeney’s, he has worked with writers who have gone on to publish in outlets including the New York Times, The New Yorker, and the Guardian.Before We Begin . . .

Do me a favor and write down how to make a peanut-butter-and- jelly sandwich. You can even write it right in the book if you want. It’s a good thing to write in books, and I’ve asked the publisher to leave some room.

WRITING  EXPERIENCES                                  
In this book, rather than “assignments” or “essays,” I want us to consider what we’re doing in terms of “experiences.” While you’ve likely done lots of writing, for our purposes, you’ve just completed your first writing “experience.” How did you do?
Take a moment to visualize what would happen if someone who is unfamiliar with making a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich could successfully make an acceptable sandwich with your instruc- tions.
What would they do? What’s missing?
For example, is there a line like “Take the peanut butter and spread it on one side of the bread”?
Picture someone following this instruction literally.
It does not tell this person how much peanut butter to spread or what to spread it with. A true literalist would actually be rubbing the closed peanut butter jar against a piece of bread.
Mmm . . . delicious.
Maybe this seems picky or ridiculous, but imagine leaving out key instructions for something not as mundane as making a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.
Take a couple of minutes to see all the mistakes you might cause if someone followed your instructions to the letter.
 
LEARNING  FROM EXPERIENCES
Do not feel bad if you now recognize your instructions as subpar. I set you up for failure. Over the years, I have asked hundreds, maybe thousands, of people, ranging from students to tenured
professors to published writers, to prepare instructions for making a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, and almost invariably they make very similar mistakes.
They make mistakes because I purposefully neglected to mention an audience in the instructions, and by not doing this I have induced them to be careless and inconsiderate of the audience’s needs. This is forgivable since they didn’t know the audience existed.
Most people, when asked to do this, write a vague description of themselves making a sandwich. In their minds, they picture the steps as they see them, rather than through the eyes of an inexperienced sandwich maker.
Now that you are aware of an audience, you would likely change your directions in significant ways.
Being “audience aware” while working is one of the most important skills writers develop. Over time, it becomes second nature to ask yourself if the choices you’re making are good ones.
You are already a more experienced writer with an improved appreciation for the role of the audience in writing, and we’ve just barely started.
Before we move on to more experiences, I want to answer some questions you might be having.

QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS BOOK

WHO IS IT FOR?
This book is for anyone who wants to improve their writing, which is everyone because everyone is a writer.
Think about it. You write all the time. You text, you e-mail, you interact on social media, you make lists, and you write for school or work or both. On any given day, you write thousands of words. Writing is communication. If you’re trying to convey a specific message to a specific audience to fulfill a specific purpose, you’re
writing
 
HOW DOES IT WORK?
We get better at writing the same way we get better at anything else: by doing it. This book is designed for doing things that allow you to practice the “writer’s practice.”
Yes, you are going to practice your practice: the attitudes, skills, habits of mind, and knowledge that writers engage with when they are writing. Ultimately, the goal is to think and act as a writer whenever you are confronted with a writing task.
You will practice your practice by engaging with different experiences, after which you will reflect on the experience to better understand what you’ve learned and can apply the next time you are confronted with a writing-related problem.
The experience of writing instructions for a peanut-butter-and- jelly sandwich has likely already allowed you to reflect on how important it is to consider your audience before you start writing. Now that we know that considering the audience is a key to effective communication, we will do it from this moment forward.
Writing is a skill, but it’s a skill that can appear to disappear when we move from a familiar writing task to an unfamiliar writing task. Reflection is a way to transfer what we know about writing in one arena to a new arena by understanding the similarities and identifying the differences and adjusting accordingly.
It’s like an athlete looking at game tape or a musician reviewing a performance. We’re asking: What happened? What did I learn? What will I do differently the next time?
Eventually enough experience accrues and you have a battle-tested process for tackling any writing task, no matter how unfamiliar.
 
WHAT DO I NEED?
There are no prerequisites for having these experiences, and there is no one so experienced that they can’t benefit from them. In fact, once I started thinking about writing as a series of experiences, I became a much better writer. When I need to write something unfamiliar, I now try to break it down as a writing experience. Once you’ve had enough experiences, you too will be able to take an unfamiliar writing task and break it down into its component parts.
You’ll want to keep track of your writing experiences one way or another, but you should use the writing tools with which you’re most comfortable. I’m a word-processing software person myself, but if you’re a chisel and stone tablet type, all blessings to you.
In addition to the experiences themselves, I’ve included chapters designed to allow for deeper, big-picture reflection about what you’re learning.
 
WILL THIS WORK IN A CLASS?
The experiences are designed to be adaptable to a class context. An instructor can add elements such as grading criteria, deadlines, word counts, specific readings, peer response, or anything else necessary to fit the structures and rhythms of school. Almost all of these experiences were born in the college classrooms in which I’ve worked for twenty years.
In the appendix, I’ve included possible assignment sequences that may be useful in planning a contained, semester-long course. It’s important to remember that these are designed to be “experiences,” and the meaning is in the doing. This leaves room for any necessary alterations to meet specific curricular needs or demands.
 
WHAT IF I’M WORKING ALONE?
Care has been taken to make all experiences self-contained and doable on your own. Because we always write for audiences, at times you will be asked to find someone to test your writing’s effectiveness on, but following the process will provide you with enough information and context to complete the experience and, in turn, increase your knowledge of and confidence in your own writing.

HOW DO I START?
You’ve already started. Now that you’ve started, you should try as many experiences as you like. Some can take as little as a few minutes, while others may stretch over days or weeks. Many of these experiences can be repeated over and over, and you will continue to learn new things each time.
Just like a musician, you may choose to “play” the same piece over and over, and find you become more deeply familiar with a particular writing experience each time around. The learning is always in the doing.

WHERE ARE WE GOING?                    
I have been writing seriously for more than twenty-five years and teaching for twenty. I am certain that everyone can learn to write, but to achieve this the writer must be in charge of their own learning.
This book is here to give shape to your practice, and encourage you to work purposefully toward increased proficiency.
While you will quite quickly amass experience, it’s important to recognize that there is no terminal expertise in writing. You will get a little better every time you do it, but you will never reach a finish line after which you will cease to improve.
This is one of the best things about writing with purpose and writing through different experiences.
May as well keep going by next figuring out who you are as a writer.US

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