Revisiting Sondra Perl

Having read the piece "Understanding Composing" by Sondra Perl, I've discovered more useful information from her.  In my initial posting I pulled out that the recursive process was the most important contribuition Perl had made to the theory of the writing process.  Looking back now I feel the most important idea to me was her thoughts on "projective structuring". 

I've often found myself writing papers or essays and thinking too much about the audience.  I'm more concerned with shaping it towards the professor than to what I'm actually wanting to say.  Often I've used this method because the topics don't interest me but I'm still trying to produce an "A" worthy paper.  For the most part it has been a successful way to write if you determine success by grades.  However, I've been left with countless papers and essays that I loathe because they don't really represent my own ideas or thoughts.

From the Sondra Perl reading I see that projective structuring shouldn't be the whole process but just a piece of the composing process.  I must keep the audience in mind when writing because I'm not just writing for myself.  However, the paper shouldn't be tailored made for a specific person and that is okay to put more of myself into the work.  I plan to use this idea on any of my preceding papers to see if the quality, to me, is improved.  It would make the whole writing experience, on the college level, more enjoyable if I have work that I could look back on with pride.

So I guess this is a retraction of sorts from my first post.  Personally, Perl's biggest contribution to the world of writing is "projective structuring".