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Summary: This article was how writers write. A few teachers were given an assignment to see how they wrote. They found out that writers tend to reread or take words out and replace them with others and simply just keep adding on to their stories. They also found out that we have felt sense. Felt sense is what helps us write and gives us our creativity, our momentum to keep writing. Felt sense comes from within the body, its something we feel and when it does hit us its practically like magic. Some people feel it in different parts of there body, but mostly stomach. They also found two key points to writing; retrospective and projective structuring. Retrospective helps the writer discover something they didn't before and projective causes conserns for the writer about his or hers audience. Over all they found different skills that writers use but do not really notice they are using them.

Question: Have you ever experienced felt sense? Has it helped you?

Answer: I have experienced felt sense before. At first i'm blank and just sitting there thinking and thinking until i relax and it hits me. So many thoughts come to mind and I'm just writing like there is no tomorrow. Felt sense has helped me so many times with essays, I never knew there was such a thing until this article. Felt sense really does give us our creativity and our momentum to write.

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Alyssa Vasquez
Eng 1301.28
9/3/10

Summary: Composing an essay or any kind of writing, that is to be read by a reader, is difficult at times if it is on certain topics that don’t really relate to you. When we write we try to find a certain relation to the topic, to be able to write with certainty and flawlessly by elaborating the subject with more details. At times we can’t write about just anything and we need to think of ways to catch the reader’s attention, which is called projective structuring. If we write about our personal things, at times most people won’t understand because not everybody has gone through the same situation. The felt sense is something that we can’t ignore or prevent from using it in writing, because I believe in order to write we need a felt sense to start an essay. When we involve felt sense sometimes it’s hard not to go off track of the topic, that’s how writing appear to be recursive, because some of us either sometimes or constantly need to go back to make sure we are still on topic. Most of the time we can’t relate to topics but we try to by creating images, ideas, and vague fuzzy feelings come alive, but most of all we try to be aware of what we are writing and in order to accomplish that we use the plan-write-revise sequence to be strictly on the topic.

Question: Explain “felt sense” in your own words. How do you relate the description of “felt sense” in the reading with your own experience? How do you “see” your “felt sense”?

Response: Felt sense is your own personal relation to a topic, with felt sense we try to relate to be able to write with detail and smoothly, it is also easier to understand. When I write, I usually try to find a personal situation that I encountered in my life to elaborate on the topic, which is felt sense. I see my felt sense as a positive and helpful thing to be able to understand certain topics and write with certainty.

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Summary:This article is about research done to see, how a writer composes his or her writing. In this case, the writers were a group of teachers, which were given an assignment to provide them with the opportunity to see their own composing process at work. They concluded that writing was recursive, and that writing was not just a linear processes with a strict plan-write-revise sequence. Instead, they saw that writers return to substrands of the overall process, which use to keep moving forward. They also saw that writers had a felt sense, when a writer is given a topic, the topic itself a felt sense in them. The topic called forth images, words, and, ideas. Also, retrospective and projective structuring are two parts of the basic process. Both form the alternating mental postures writers assume as they go through the act of composing. As they move through this cycle, they are continually composing and recomposing their meanings and what they mean. After, observing the teachers for a long time, they concluded that at any given moment the process of composing is more complex than anything that they are aware of. It showed fallacy that reducing the process of composing is more than a simple linear scheme and leaves them with potential to create even more powerful ways to understand composing.

Question: Have you ever experienced a felt sense? If so, how did it feel and did it help you to keep on with your writing?

Response: When i first read this article, I had no idea what a felt sense was; or that it was even involved while composing my writing. I had no idea that a felt sense was always there, with in us. From reading the article, I gained an understanding of what a felt sense was and how it can bring a newness and freshness to my writing.
From the the knowledge gained about a felt sense, I can say that I have experienced a felt sense. I know this is so because, as I read a topic that was given to me it brought about images, words, ideas, and a vague feeling that come from with in me from passed experiences. It brings about a sureal feeling that aids me to move for in my writng by going back and using what i already know ton help me embody what I am trying to write about. It feels like its not just a product of my mind, but my mind is like alive with my sensing body. Once something has clicked, I have enough sense to allow me to continue after i have stopped to analyze what i have written.
This can help me in my writing because after i do something once, I will have the ability to make it better, and like I said before bring a sense of newness and freshness to my writing to give the reader a better understanding to what I am trying to say. Once, something has clicked, i have enough sense and awareness that will help me with a few words that allow me to move in a certain direction to continue to flesh out the sense I have.

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Understanding Composing

Summary: In Sondra Perl's article "Understanding Composing", Perl uses a teacher's composing assignment as the main reference to explain the several correct and incorrect steps to a successful composing process. When a writer is given a specific topic to write about, he or she may feel compelled to use recursiveness, which allows writers to move foward with sub strands or subroutines in the writing. Also, the author recognizes recursiveness as the most challenging part of writing. However, within any writer's emotions there is a "felt sense", an awareness that gathers everything one feels and knows about a subject. This feeling helps the writer become aware of why the topic triggers certain senses in the writer's body and mind. Two other important key points in the composing process are retrospectice and projective structuring. Retrospective structuring helps the writer discover a surprise in the writing that they do not expect. Projective structuring causes concerns for the writers when they use it to focus on what they think others want them to write and ignore what it is they would like to write about. After her observation on the teacher, the author concludes that the process is more complex than writers are aware of.

Question: In the article, Perl states that retrospective and projective structuring are two parts of the same process. Which structure do you find is a more difficult process in your writing?

Response: I personally feel that in my writing proctective writing would be harder. When I first start to think about what I want to write I come up with too many ideas all at once. I find that one idea might be stronger than the other or that the subject might not be entertaining enough. Once I cannot figure out what would be best, I think about the people who are going to read my paper. I completey discard any ideas I had and then focus on what the readers could want. Usually when I do that I compare my writing to what I have read that was succesful and then once I start writing, the final work ends up being something I would have never written. It is important to write what you want and not worry about others. That way you may discover that your readers can relate to what you truly mean in your writing. I think Perl made a successful choice to include retrospective and projectice structing in the process because it helps writers realize if what they wrote was a complete surprise or if what they wrote ended being somehing they would not normally write.

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Mario A. Garcia
ENG 1301.28
Trang Phan
8/31/2010

Understanding Composition

SUMMARY: This article focuses on three major points of writing. The first major point of this article is recursiveness in writing that we see many people doing today. There are many questions to be asked about recursive writing. People strategize as to what people go back and think about instead of moving ahead in their work. Like any other thing sometimes recursive writing is easy for the eye to catch, while in other instances it is not, depending on what the topic of discussion is. Recursiveness in writing is simply going back to what you have written over a period of time. It can be after a page, paragraph, or even after every sentence into which you have set thought into. Some writers refer to their topic and use it as a guide to make sure that what they have written so far is on course and has not been off topic.
There is a notion that writers get when they are given a new topic. This notion is called, felt sense. Felt sense can bring out emotions and expressions into your writing that you have never before let out. Felt sense comes from our life experiences that no one else has shared, and when these experiences are shared it gives our writing more creativity because the reader knows that our voice is present.
The composing process also includes projective structuring. Projective structuring can come as stiff writing. The writer wants to state facts and opinions of others while holding back his own voice in the writing. There is no association between the writer and the topic what-so-ever and the writer seems to follow ground rules as to what he is going to be writing and limiting himself as to what can be said. These writers can also use projective structuring to ask themselves whether what they are writing is correct, and if it follows what they have learned. For projective structuring to be used to its full potential the writer must become the reader and know that what he is writing is what someone else would like to be reading.

QUESTION: From what you read in this article what does felt sense mean to you? Have you ever experienced felt sense? What do you feel when this act comes upon you?

RESPONSE: This article dropped a topic upon my mind that I had never heard of. I had never heard of it but as I learned more about what it was I realized that I had been using it as one of my strategies for writing essays since I was in elementary school as a kid. Felt sense seemed awkward to me at first. I knew it was something that triggered the mind into thinking of new and fresh ideas about the topic being written but I could not tie it in with what I was reading at the moment. As I progressed with the reading I found out that felt sense is what creates the link between the writer and the topic being written. When something is written the writer wants to convey images and emotions in their writing in order for the reader to become interested and not be bored of the normal boring writing that has no voice to it. When I do my writing it is usually very hard to get started if the topic is something that I am not very familiar with. When this occurs I take time to relate the topic to something that I do know about and express my emotions and thoughts towards that, hence being able to talk about the topic at hand. When I make the connection felt sense I start becoming more comfortable with the topic at hand.
I have experienced felt sense many times in my writing. Since felt sense means bringing newness and freshness into the writing I always think about what people see the least in this world. Because we live in a city we do not always have time to do many outdoor activities unless on special occasions. For me, outdoor activities occur every weekend at my ranch. I come across experiences that many people will never encounter and I know that if I share these experiences in my writing I know that I can portray enough emotion and detail to intrigue the reader into what I am writing and keep them attached to my work until there is nothing left to read.
When felt sense comes to me I feel as if a light bulb has come off in my head or if a simple switch has been turned on. Usually it come with a giggle afterwards and I say to myself, “why didn’t I think of this earlier” and when that switch turns on the pen starts writing and as each phrase is being written it keeps gaining momentum from the one before it making the work have coordination as to what the topic is. But the only thing that can from felt sense is going off track and not staying on topic therefore your thinking has to be compact in a way that you do not steer of the topic that was given.

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Summary

Understanding Composition

The pattern that occurs while we're writing is called "Recurssiveness". One of these patterns is "felt sense". In addintion, there is a process call "Retrospective Structuring" that uses this felt sense, another called "Projective Sturcturing" that doesn't.

Recurssiveness is found in writers in three forms. First, theres the writer who repeatly rereads what they have already written, so that the following sentence may make sense. Second, are the writers that go back to the topic and changes it to fit what they have written, or changes what they've written to fit the topic. Last, they're the writers that don't go backwards by rereading or topic. Instead, they have a bodily feeling. It's the writer's inner voice, inspiration, and experience, it's the writer's" felt sense".

Retrospective structuring is the process of getting what is imperfectly written and making sense out of it using language structure. In retrospective structuring, meaning is created from what doesn't sound right or make much sense. Then, seeing if what you came up with brings out the meaning that you wanted.

Projective structuring is a way of writing without useing any felt sense. Instead of writing what you want to express, you have to know what the reader wants to read. In order to write in this projective way, its best if your an experience reader. That way you already know what other readers might want to read, and also what they don't want to read or struggle on reading.

Question

What can be compared about "Retrospective Structure" and "Projective Structure"? What can be contrasted between "Retrospective Structure" and "Projective Structure"?

Response

What compares between the retrospective structure and projective structure is that both methods of writing want to get to the reader. Both are trying to sound good, intresting, and get the right meaning out there.

What deffers between them is that retrospective structure use felt sense. In this structure you want the reader to know what you mean to say. However, you don't really concentrate on what the reader wants to read. It's about expressing yourself right, and making the composition send the messege of your meaning.

While in projective structure you already kind of of know what the reader would want to read. In order to use the projective structure for writing you must be an experience reader to know what the reader wants to read, and what the reader might get stuck on or not enjoy reading. There for projective strucure does not use any felt sense.

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SUMMARY

Understanding Composing

In 1979, at the New York University, a study was performed giving the chance to investigate writers' composing methods at work. Writers' thoughts were taped and frequent patterns were evident during the thinking and composing process. Would this assignment prove that all writers undergo similar behaviors in the development of composing a paper?

At the outset, it was noticed that a writer rereads subsequenty after writing a few sentences. Then came the observation of writers returning to the topic given to change what has been written and fit the topic more appropriately. This is called recursive behavior. It was described by Anne as "gaining momentum". Additionally, a third backward action was recorded. It's a nonverbal percepton that occurs when a writer "feels something inside of them". According to Eugene Gendlin, this is a "felt sense"; "it is body and mind before they are spilt apart". Felt sense can create images, words, ideas, and feelings inside a writer's body, which I believe is the moment a light bulb clicks in your head.

Felt sense has many forms to mold our writing. We, as writers, begin with thoughts which are not fully developed, and we turn that into something real, something actual. The structuring, on the other hand, is the knowing how to write what the reader wants them to write, rather than what the writer wants to write. Writers "go inside", attend to what they are feeling (felt sense), and assess the words that obtain the meaning. In the processes explained, we undergo recursive patterns, which are the building blocks to composing a paper.

QUESTION

How do you think Sondra Perl's "Understanding Composing" can help you become a better writer? How can it help a struggling writer construct their thoughts on paper?

RESPONSE

When reading the article, I immediately felt a connection with the text. As I read more and more of the article, I became so interested in ways to improve the way I write my papers, since I stress and struggle whenever I'm assigned a paper. I usually take a while writing due to all of the distractions going on around me. It's hard to focus most of the time, but this article taught me how to keep my flow of though, and write a paper effectively.

I know that a majority of students, just like myself, struggle to understand the elements and processes that go into composing a paper. Therefore, I view Sondra Perl's article as a tool, and a way to discover how to craft and construct ideas onto paper. Ways to continue moving forward are to reread your sentences, go back to the topic, and most importantly, listen to your felt sense. If we students are able to comprehend the structures of writing such as retrospective structuring and projective structuring, we will have a better understanding of how to develop an intelligible paper, which is a huge benefit.