Planning Strategies and the Womanly Autobiography

I know it's taken me a while to respond. My time usually reserved for homework and posting has been taken up by me house-sitting and pet-sitting…this last week and upcoming week were/are impossibly busy.

Berkenkotter: This was a good idea for both Berkenkotter and Murray. I liked how she broke up her essay into the "methodology" and "results," along with other parts and then finally summarized. I'm going back and re-reading the transcription of Murray's thoughts/writing as I'm writing this…and, I don't know this man, but I like him better in this piece than I do in his own "writing is autobiography" piece. He really thinks of the audience, and I know that's something that I have difficulty with. I don't ask myself enough questions when I write, I think. I know these readings are meant to help us out with teaching writing, but this one (and a handful of others) kind of make me think about my own writing. I guess my one "note" to make about this piece is that…I don't know, maybe I'm alone on this, but I think that Murray's letter about death to the 11 year old was maybe his comment that Berkenkotter didn't give him a prompt he thought worthwhile. No? I could be wrong.

Flynn: "If women and men differ in their relational capacities and in their moral and intellectual development, we would expect to find manifestations of these differences in the student papers we encounter in our first-year composition courses" (182). Not necessarily. Not if what students are producing at that stage are slightly varied imitations of Lambert's (is it Lambert?) freshman "canned essay." Can that ancient model be gendered? I guess if it is, it's probably leaning towards the male persuasion. I did like Flynn's essay. There is a difference between women and men when it comes to writing…and Culler's right about the reading part, too. I think a lot of essays can be written similarly to this one. What about age? And socioeconomic class?
Hm. I wasn't a big fan of Flynn's examples. I think her arguments for anxiety, connection to nature, and individualism can be made for both sides.

Murray: In class, it seemed like people either really liked this piece or really hated it. I didn't dislike it, but I certainly didn't think it was all that great. A lot of the items Murray included in his essay seemed to be there to simply showcase his range and wit. Especially the previously unpublished poem that he just happened to include here (and thus, getting it inadvertently published). I agree with him to a degree. Essentially, yes, all writing that comes from an individual is through some sort of lens or filter and is, in that sense, autobiographical. But things like technical writing and ghost-writing (as Shipka pointed out) are anything but autobiographical. Wouldn't a better argument be "All writing is subjective?"...but that's probably too broad of an argument to make.