Scores of composition instructors agree that writing should be taught as a recursive process, rather than a liner process, and they also agree that most writers employ certain writing strategies as they produce drafts. Sandra Perl’s article, Understanding Composing” shares these beliefs because she states: “writing does appear to be recursive, yet the parts that recur seem to vary from writer to writer and from topic to topic” (142). Perl explains that throughout the writing process, writers employ a “forward-moving action that exists by virtue of
backward-moving action” (141). Furthermore, Perl claims that when writers plan, draft, and revise their writings, they use a process she labels as retrospective structuring which involves attending to a writer’s a felt sense, returning to the topic presented, rereading what has been already written, and reassessing the words written (145).
Perl claims that the most important retrospective structuring feature involves writers paying attention to their felt sense, a term she borrows from Eugene Gendlin, a philosopher at the University of Chicago (142). Perl defines a writer’s felt sense as a bodily experience or nonverbal thought that “surround the words, or to what the words already present evoke in the writer” (142). Moreover, when writers use the process of felt sense they pause and react to “what is inside of them,” and writers seem to focus on “careful attention to one’s inner reflections and is often accompanied with bodily sensations”(Perl 144). Furthermore, Perl believes that skilled writers employ their felt sense unknowingly while unskilled writers can be taught how to pay close attention to their felt sense (144).
Perl then describes that when presented with a topic, writers take in the topic and attend to their felt sense and wait to see what forms before they begin to write (144). Perl states that a topic evokes a writer’ felt sense and the topic, “calls forth images, words, ideas, and vague fuzzy feelings that are anchored in the writer's body. What is elicited, then, is not solely the product of a mind but of a mind alive in a living, sensing body” (143). If something is still unclear or vague, writers will return to the topic and reread key words allowing the topic to deepen until their felt sense forms an image, word, or a phrase that “captures the sense they embody” (Perl 143). At this point, a writer does not have the words they want to write, but something has “clicked,” and they are now ready to begin writing on the topic.
Once writers begin the composing process, Perl claims that the most visible reoccurring feature is when writers go back to reread what already has been written. For some writers, rereading takes places after a few phrases or after every sentence, but more commonly, rereading occurs after a “chunck” of information has been written (Perl 142). Perl emphasizes that by rereading what has been written, sometimes writers discover the words they have written do not really encompass what they intended to convey. In this case, writers need to reassess the words they have written and change them to capture the intended meaning. (142). According to Perl, if something is missing in their writing, the writer needs to pause and let his or her “felt sense of what is missing form and then write out of that sense” (145). As result, as writers continually revise their drafts, writers are further structuring their sense as it corresponds to shaping their piece of writing (145).
Another reoccurring feature Perl point outs involves writers frequently returning to the topic and calling up a key word or item (142). According to Perl, usually when writers need to reread the topic, they are experiencing writer’s block, and writers are rereading the topic or key words as a way to revive the same felt sense the topic originally evoked. Other times, when rereading the topic, writers find that they have strayed from the topic or something is missing from what they are trying to say (Perl 145). On the other hand, Perl claims that sometimes: “in rereading we discover that the topic is ‘wrong,’ that the direction we discovered in writing is where we really want to go” (145). Moreover, Perl states that sometimes writers will change what they have written in order to ensure they are addressing the topic.
Perl states that another feature of the composing process is projective structuring. She defines projective structuring as: “the ability to craft what one intends to say so that it is intelligible to others” (146). According to Perl, writers must take on the role of the reader and “assess how the words on that page will affect someone other than the writer, the reader” (147). During this process, writers need to ask themselves what someone else will require before the piece of writing can become clear and captivating. Moreover, Perl proposes that retrospective and projective structuring are two elements of the same process and Perl claims: “Together they form the alternating mental postures writers assume as they move through the act of composing (147).
I believe that Perl offers some valuable insights to the composing process, and I agree with her that writing is a recursive process. As an English tutor, I always encourage my student to reread what they have previously written. In doing so, many students will discover that some sentences in their drafts ”just do not sound right” and they are now able to make the necessary adjustments, making their writing more coherent. I also believe that rereading key words in the topic helps students generate new ideas and the key words in the topic could be used during a prewriting activity, such as creating a clustering diagram. Lastly, I am elated that Perl provides a name to something that cannot really be explained—felt sense. I will now be able to tell my students to “call up” their felt sense as way to aid with their writing.