After reviewing the research conducted in Carol Berkenkotter’s “Decisions and Revisions: The Planning Strategies of a Publishing Write“, it was interesting to learn the mental challenges a writing professional tackles when their performing a revision and editing their writing pieces. I was shocked when Donald M. Murray (the test subject) had difficult time trying to get through obstacle two and three considering he has vast knowledge in writing. But then again, he was more confined by the rules and the specific task during those stages. The stage I was more fascinated by was the first stage of the experiment. It was also great to see how Carol Berkenkotter was able to go even further on the “think-aloud” protocol by having Donald speak anytime he would think about the topic he was introduced.
Another thing I also enjoyed from this article was the results from the stages, showing that Donald spent more time on planning than any other category which is understandable. Everyone has to plan a lot for writing something important such as the experiment. For instance, whenever I have an assignment that involves reading a journal and having to write about the contents, I usually plan with my head and those thoughts would branch off to other ideas in which could potentially lead to a topic. However, I don’t think I would take too much time to plan since I have other matters to deal with and time isn’t too friendly to most college students such as myself. I think the reason why Donald spent so much time on planning and even less on revising throughout the experiment was because he already was always making changes in his plannings whenever he had the chance.
While I do admit this research article along with Donald’s side of the experience (in the same document) have provided key discoveries on how a professional writer thinks and acts, I feel like Carol missed an opportunity. It would’ve been more interesting to witness Carol to use the same methodology on a student or someone who isn’t a professional in writing. Who knows, maybe someone would do better or worse than Donald in one of the three stages. There are also other individuals who like to see some more from this research. Actually, there is one individual known as “labarcak” (we’ll just call this person Labar for short) who wrote a blog post about this topic.
In Labar’s post about Berkenkotter’s Study on the Writing Process, they also mention at the end or their post stating that there is more likely more investigation to be conducted about the writing process. I agree with this person with not only this statement but also the following one afterwards. Labar’s next stated the following, “I think it would be interesting to see studies of the writing process of well-known authors so we could get a look into how they create and process their work” (Labar 2023). Since I’m a creative writing major, this idea would definitely be an excellent guidance to me and those who like to write stories whether it’s fictional or an autobiography. It would highlight several thinking processes that each well-known authors have and implement them or combine them to my own.
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