Practice
Following Steve and others, Jeff adds a post about writing. While both of them focus on dissertations, what they say is useful for a variety of sizes (and kinds) of writing projects.
Of course, everyone has their own predilections, and the danger of putting too much emphasis in reading narratives of other folks’ writing processes is worrying you’re not doing it right. While it’s easy to say “There is no right way to write,” academic and popular standards make abundantly clear there are right and wrong results at a variety of levels, manifested in a variety of ways. Clarity, grace, concision… publication, revise and resubmit, rejection… and of course grading. A quick search on Amazon or the Chronicle or wherever will show a bazillion things written about writing. For me, the best part of point of the “practice article” or “practice book” approach which (like Jeff) I learned from Greg Ulmer is not just thinking “practice” as in rehearsal but practice as in theory and practice. The articles, the advice, the lore—that’s theory. The practice, or rather the practices, come from that in the same ways other theories and practices are related.
