ENC1101

DISCUSSION POST
PRIOR

Paul Prior really goes in depth to explain how even though everyone thinks they write their
own work, they truly dont. Dont get me wrong, Prior is not saying that we plagiarize, but that
everything that we write about has either come from an experience, conversation with someone,
pictures, or some other form of prior knowledge. He tells us that writing processes not only help
us understand how writing works, but it also helps us to grasp how we write and fix and mold it
into the writers that we want to be. Prior talks about how we should collect any old drafts, texts
or conversations, or anything that helps us remember how our paper started. Also, Prior suggests
the Think-Aloud Protocol where the writer records everything they are thinking as well as
everything they are putting down on paper. Another way to reveal the writer and why/how they
write is by process logs. Paul Prior uses a lot of strategies and really explains how the writing
process is done and how it could explain how a writer writes.
After reading Priors text, I really felt like if I were to complete many of his activities and
strategies that I would be able to analyze my writing. After reading this passage, I also felt as
though that I really need to improve my writing and Prior gives me a lot of ideas on how to do
that. The writing process is not what everyone truly believes it to be and reading this text really
showed me that. I think that if I had to do a process log though, it would be long and tiring and I
would be so happy that its over that I probably wouldnt even care about the results. Lilah, a
graduate student, completed a process log in a study that Prior was doing and she handed in 73
handwritten pages of text to him; that just sounds crazy to analyze your writing for that long. I
believe that all of Priors ideas and strategies are good but I wonder who really has the time to
conduct all of these studies and experiments and if the experimenters tell the people what they
figure out what they finish the experiment.

Prior, Paul. "Tracing Process: How Texts Come into Being." 2004. Ed. Charles Bazerman
and Paul Prior. Writing About Writing. By Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. 2nd ed. Boston:
Leasa Burton, 2014. 492-523. Print.