Harris' Ideas on Writing: Rewriting

In the first two chapters of Harris’ Rewriting, he defines reading and writing as he sees it. His idea of writing is that we draw off of the ideas of others in our own writing; he calls it rewriting. The process of writing, as interpreted from Harris’ introduction, includes drawing from others’ ideas, commenting on such ideas, and adding to previously given ideas. Harris believes that “intellectuals almost always write in response to the work of others”. He seems to be saying in the introduction that the most difficult part of writing is figuring out what and how to add to the work of others that you have read.

An interesting point that I thought about in Harris’ introduction was that reading could almost be considered simply a precursor to writing if you look at it from Harris’ point of view. If we write almost always in response to other writers, then isn’t reading just the first step to writing? It could be considered just the gathering of more ideas and further analysis of ideas already presented.

In the chapter Coming to Terms, Harris presents additional thought to what reading is. “Texts don’t simply reveal their meanings to us; we need to make sense of them.” Here, he emphasizes the point that reading involves serious analyzation to fully comprehend each idea in the text and to write about or respond to these ideas.

One of the first connections I drew between Harris’ and Sullivan’s ideas on writing was that they both portrayed writing as a type of commentary or response to something in a way. Both authors were related in the way they seemed to view writing in that they described writing as always involving or being influenced by outside sources or purposes. Harris stated that nearly all writing was in response to other writing and Sullivan gave the idea that writing (or blogging) is like a newsfeed, commenting on current events and beliefs for the most part.