Nick 

McAndrew

Jan Rieman

English 1101 X

April 8th, 2010

Renewable Resources

In chapter one of Writing Conventions, Min-Zhan Lu and Bruce Horner write that writing is a

process. Composing and the writing of a paper, for most people, may include very complex

thoughts, recursive movements and many eraser marks! In chapter one, they describe writing to

be an ever changing, non-stop process, where the changing of strategies and revising of a

paper is the heart of the final product. What Lu and Horner convey in this first chapter is that

writing is not meant to be an enclosed process; it should be a completely unpredictable and wide

open experience. Throughout chapter one Lu and Horner constantly portray the importance

of resources to pose and compose a good paper.

Writers are equipped with a set of skills due to their different abilities and what kind of

backgrounds that they have. These skills are called resources; resources can be where the writer

writes, what he/she writes on, what materials they have to write with, what they do, and even

past experiences. These resources are what make each paper different because every writer

has a different background.

Lu and Horner set up a hypothetical situation where they present examples of different

resources. Two students, Bill and Andrea are given a prompt and asked to give their opinion and

write on it. The prompt is: is it the media’s or the parent’s responsibility to protect children from
violence. Bill used his parents to help him as a resource. He wrote about how the media was at

fault. Although Bill does not stick with this thesis, it shows that he changes writing

process. Andrea, the other student, used her past experiences with the debate team as a resource.

This resource helped her find additional points for each side. In the end this method strengthened

her argument that it was the media’s responsibility to protect children from violence. This

example shows the various resources writers use so that they can produce and compose a well

thought out paper. These various resources bring out a whole range of actions and courses of

actions at different points of the composing process. Everyone has a different past than each

other and draws from the various experiences and events that have happened in their life. This is

why no paper or writer is ever the same. I in particular get my resources from past literature that

I have read and subsequently learned from. 

Lu and Horner continue to portray that we as writers are also subject

to interpretation. The verbal and visual interpretations writers bring to a particular word often

differ because of their backgrounds as writers and individuals. Lu and Horner exclaim that

because we all have grown up with different surroundings words might mean something

different to different people. When one writes they must be aware of misinterpretation and try

their best to make sure the correct point is being made. 

Other than individuals having different definitions for words, writers may take a word

and have a different understanding for it than another writer. Lu and Horner give the example of

how to construct a thesis. It is certain that a thesis is an important strategy for a good paper, but it

is not certain when a writer should implement the thesis. Some writers cannot even start their

papers until they have a good thesis and some don’t even decide what their thesis is until they are

finished with the paper. This example reinstates the point that different strategies work for
different writers. For example I cannot write my paper until I have a concrete thesis. I have to

plan out my entire paper through my thesis. 

This aspect of originality that Lu and Horner bring to the article is refreshing and

brings new information to readers who did not think of writing as a process before this article

was read. I know after reading this article I felt a new appreciation for my own style of writing

and incorporated it in with Lu and Horner’s method. What Lu and Horner do is provide a process

of posing and composing that helps keep a paper original and well thought out. After reading this

article I now take my resources and past experiences in writing and mold all of them to produce a

good paper.