1.5 Reading to Write
Nancy Ami; Natalie Boldt; Sara Humphreys; and Erin Kelly
For the purpose of illustration, let’s assume you have an assignment to write an essay that records your reaction to a class reading, such as an academic article about restorative justice programs for first-time offenders (If you would like to practice, please do open this “Youth Outcomes in a Community Collaboration Model”[1] and then follow along). You have read the article, and now you can get started in a number of different ways.
You can start with what’s in your head already. Try writing down all your thoughts and questions. Try to imagine yourself having a conversation with the author of the article—what would you ask her about? Pretend that you are an individual who has been charged and found guilty of having stolen a bike—what story could you tell about this situation, and what would you want to happen next? Next imagine that you are the person whose bike was stolen—what would you want to see happen to the person who took your property? Your thoughts and imagination can generate lots of material for a writing project. And there is a long tradition of writers talking about the experience of being inspired, feeling that an idea has come to them and that they only have to write it down.
But we can’t always count on inspiration to get a job done. (The painter Pablo Picasso once said, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”) To get started, you can also look around and collect what seems like it might prove useful. An ancient term for the earliest stage of the writing process is inventio—which doesn’t align with our sense of the word invention (to make something that didn’t exist previously). Inventio means to find, come upon, or discover something already there (read more about “inventio” on the “Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric” website).[2]
In other words, you can start the process of looking for and collecting what’s available. In the case of this essay assignment, you could re-read the original article and take notes on the points that seem most important to you or points that relate to what the assignment asks of you. For example, if you are asked to write an annotated bibliography (see chapter two for details on what an annotated bibliography is!), then you would read for the article’s arguments and evidence. Actually, this approach works well no matter what kind of academic article you are reading: read for the argument and you really can’t go wrong. If you have time, maybe try this out with the article we provided for you to practice with?
Once you have found the main argument (and the supporting arguments and evidence), then you could write down a couple of sentences recording whether you agree or disagree with the author’s ideas or arguments and why. You could also do a bit of reading around. (When such reading around occurs in a more formal way, we call it research.)
Now go and watch videos on YouTube that have something to do with