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An Organizational Writing Agenda |
| A. | Preparing | 1. | Resolve the writing issues raised by the uniform writing code: the abstract pressure for brevity; a professional dialect; the substitution of impersonal authority, tone, and style for individual responsibility and personal voice. | | 2. | Begin the writing process with a sense of responsibility for the meaning of your product. |
| | B. | Planning | 1. | Sketch out a realistic QUICK WRITING PROCESS timetable. | | 2. | Plan for too much material, in order to compress and represent analysis, evidence, and perspective adequately. | | 3. | Plan a structure that will portray the energy and dynamics of a dialectical conversation instead of an abstract notion of formality. |
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Generating | | Engage the reader in the writing process; talk through the project, and establish a basis for feedback. | | | Create an adequate framework for longer projects by writing a quick "treatment" that sharpens the scope, scale, and style of the project, and will provide the reader with a road map of your argument. | | | Generate the provisional thesis and because-clauses freely, without self- or organizational censorship. | | | Analyze the clauses into the argument-outline of an authentic response to the question, acknowledging what you don't know or haven't had time to discover. | | | Include an authentic account of the "other side." |
| Producing | 1. | Promote an atmosphere of give and take about writing in progress, especially after the first cuts on the raw draft. | | 2. | Carry out the QUICK WRITING PROCESS agenda through the roughly final draft to the proofread final copy with as much feedback as possible. | | 3. | Maintain a policy that authenticates your own work, and raises the level of literacy throughout the organization. |
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