Teach Writing as a Process, Not Product by Donald Murray

In this essay Murray delivers his opinion about the fact that writing is not a product it is a process.  This is an infinitely important statement about writing, about how it is not liner and does not come out of students like literature.  Writing is a process so therefore mistakes are inevitable, but the writer must be encouraged to discover their voice, to discover their truth, despite what mistakes they make along the way. 

The process that Murray is talking about is the way in which we view the world, how we feel about it and how we convey that through language.  We also invent the world through our perception of it. 

Murray talks about prewriting, writing, and rewriting, prewriting being the most important of the three.  Prewriting is about awareness of the world, when we look at the world around us through our own lens and make mental notes and daydream and make outlines.  It is the time of reflection.

Writing and rewriting are just as important, but they seem to flow at a faster pace once the prewriting is done.  

     1.  Murray, Donald M.  "Teach Writing as a Process, Not Product."  The Leaflet  (1972): 11-14.  Print.