In their essay, "A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing," Linda Flower and John R. Hayes explore the question of what guides the decisions writers make while writing. The essay enhances four main points. First, the writing process is best understood as a set of thinking processes that writers develop while composing. Second, these thinking processes have a hierarchical organization wherein any process may be embedded within another. Third, the act of composing is a goal-directed thinking process, guided by the writer's own network of goals. Fourth, writers create their own goals in two main ways: by generating both high-level goals and supporting sub-goals that encompass the writer's sense of purpose while writing, and even sometimes by changing goals or establishing new goals based on what the writer has realized while writing.
Flower and Hayes discuss the stage process model, of which an example would be the pre-write/write/re-write model. They also make the assertion that a model is a metaphor for a process because it is a way to describe something. Within the model, or process, are the three units including the task environment which includes everything outside the writer's skin, the writer's long term memory which houses stored knowledge, and the writing process which includes planning, translating, and reviewing. These principles are better laid out in the model on page 278 of Cross Talk in Composition, and it is easier to see how they all correlate to one another.
According to Flower and Hayes, during the planning process, writers develop and internal representation of the knowledge that they will use for writing. Then, the logic that keeps the writer going comes from the goals which writers create while composing. Oftentimes, writers will revise major goals due to what they learned through writing. They start with a high goal and then develop sub-goals and even regenerate those goals at times, which is a powerful creative process, as states Flower and Hayes. Basically, the writer uses a goal to generate ideas, then consolidates those ideas, uses them to regenerate new goals, and the learning process is in full swing. By setting new goals, the creative learning process is really developed.
To me, these ideas seem very lofty, but seem to build upon things I have already learned, or use in my writing. I constantly come up with new writing goals as I write and develop my thoughts more clearly. It is for that reason that I constantly find myself revising my writing - I can almost always restructure an idea or devise a completely new idea based on something I have explored while writing. I think that oftentimes my best arguments are not the first things I come up with, or even set up in the first draft. The "reviewing" step that Flower and Hayes explain to encompass evaluating and revising is probably where I spend the most of my writing time. As much as I try to plan and organize my thoughts and develop a thesis that shows my aim or goal in writing, I always find it necessary to go back and redevelop, or revise my thoughts into a better argument.
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One thing that really stuck out in my mind was Linda Flower’s assertion that expert writers anticipate the reader’s response and restructure their argument based upon that. I first read that in Bartholomae’s piece, but after reading the Flower and Hayes article, I think what that is really referring to is the idea that experienced writers will go into the writing process with a goal, or series of goals, but then reshape their goals as they get further into the process, and even redefine goals entirely, if need be. When I think about how Bartholomae differentiated between basic and experienced writers, I would see the basic writer as almost being lazy and not wanting to see the holes in their argument, or the necessity of redefining goals because it presents a lot more work for them. Be expert writer, on the other hand, is willing to look into that challenge. The chart that Flower and Hayes present in their essay helps you really define what type of writing you are doing, even as applied to Bartholomae’s ideas. You can look at the different aspects of the chart and see exactly how much effort is put forth in each category and better identify yourself as a basic writer, or someone who has really entered the specialized discourse community and created your own voice and assertions based on your own research.
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