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Post 2: L. Lennie Irvin's 7 Myths of Academic Writing: Is It The Truth?

Are these myths bias or are they true? In Irvin's essay, "What Is “Academic” Writing?" he outlined and debunked 7 myths that most high school and college students were made to believe as they evolved as writers. The Myths Are:
  • Myth #1: The “Paint by Numbers” myth 
  • Myth #2: Writers only start writing when they have everything figured out 
  • Myth #3: Perfect first drafts 
  • Myth #4: Some got it; I don’t—the genius fallacy
  • Myth #5: Good grammar is good writing
  • Myth #6: The Five Paragraph Essay
  • Myth #7: Never use “I” 
Most of these myth's I have personally never heard of but I just can't agree with myth #1. The myth is described as "writers believe they must perform certain steps in a particular order to write “correctly.” Rather than being a lock-step linear process,-". Maybe it's just me being stubborn but I've always been taught to follow an evidence triangle or some type of layout when I wrote essays and it made it a little more easier and clean for me. So sorry to say but no matter how much evidence he could come up with to debunk that myth it's almost impossible for me to believe it because it's been trained into me. But what about you? Do you still believe in any of these myths?

Comments

  1. keith.hamonJanuary 21, 2018 at 11:15 AM

    I really like how you handled his myths, and I agree with you that having a procedure (also known as a heuristic) for writing can be a big help. Irvin's point is that you can't be locked into one heuristic, or one tool. Good writers need a toolbox full of different tools.

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