Donald Murray

Thanks to Tony's engaging presentation, I was inspired to look at some of Donald Murray's published work. That guy wrote a lot about a lot of stuff.


In Write before Writing (College Composition and Communication, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Dec., 1978), pp. 375-381), Murray offers this suggestion for teachers of writing, "We may need, for example, to reconsider our attitude towards those who delay writing. We may, in fact, need to force many of our glib, hair-trigger student writers to slow down, to daydream, to waste time, but not to avoid a reasonable deadline." This sounds to me like brilliant advice. I would bet that most people who end up in graduate English programs are the kind who can write on command - 500 words on any subject or on no subject at all. Maybe all of us "good writers" don't really know how most people feel about writing. And perhaps we "good writers" are too quick to fling a bunch of big words on the page, not paying enough attention to content and artistry.

In the previously mentioned article, Murray comments that, as a journalist, he looks for the lead, and then the writing takes shape from there. I have experience in magazine and newspaper writing, and I take the same approach. Sometimes it leads me down blind alleys, but it always gets me started.

I am all for further exploration of Murray's Pre-Writing or Pre-Visioning concept. I think an awful lot of bad writing can be blamed on the lack of preparation.