Decisions and Revisions: The Planning Strategies of a Publishing Writer

Throughout Carol Berkenkotter’s writing, she conducted a study that she did on another writer Donald M. Murray. Berkenkotter’s main focus and interest was how different writers organize and process certain information. Throughout her study, there have been many other studies that were also done. However, these studies were based on how different children gathered their thoughts as they are learning how to write. Although this was a great study, this wasn’t what Berkenkotter was looking for. She wanted someone who was a professional writer and someone who was able to write a well written paper that can be examined by Berkenkotter. Donald M. Murray was who she did her study on, and Berkenkotter examined how he wrote, his thought process, and the habits he has throughout his writing.

There were three stages that Murray went through over a span of many days. In the first stage, Murray had to turn on a tape recorder any time he worked on his writing. Murray had to think out loud any thought that came to his mind that way Berkenkotter can have stable and the most accurate results possible. For the second stage, Berkenkotter asked Murray if he was able to come to his college and create a writing that had a specific audience and purpose and only had a certain amount of time to complete this writing. For the last stage, stage three, Berkenkotter ended up visiting Murray and his home and noted everything he created which was an article that was for a journal.

After the three stages were recorded, Berkenkotter found that Murray repeated the same question out lead asking himself if his points were clear and easy to understand. Throughout this process, it was recognizable that the writer was in places he was unfamiliar with and had to write on a subject where his knowledge was limited. There are many people who have different writing process styles. However, to determine how the writing process actually works and to understand it clearer, there would need to be numerous of studies done to coming to a conclusion on how it works. In my opinion, looking into the studies and seeing how authors write and their understadning of thinking would be very interesting.