At times when the writing task is more exploratory and speculative, Sondra Perl, a compositionist, suggests we need to follow our "felt sense"-- our nonverbal feel of what we hope to say.
Work With Your Felt Senses
Admittedly, this advice -- to play the believing game and trust your felt sense -- may sound ridiculously "touchy feely." Fortunately, from studying the composing strategies of successful academic writers (as well as blocked writers), we can offer additional advice to help you navigate the early stages of the writing process. To help you improve as a writer, I strongly encourage you to learn more about the effective habits of successful academic writers by scanning the following documents:
- As mentioned in the Play the Believing Game section, in the early stages of writing, you want to play the believing game and trust your felt sense. In other words, when first beginning a project, you want to try and ignore negative, critical thoughts.
- In contrast, Play the Doubting Game is more critical and analytical. During Play the Doubting Game, you want to attack your documents--and invite your friends and peers to attack your work.