I thought this week’s Boice chapter was largely sensible, if a tad obvious. He belabors a fairly evident claim. That taking notes and outlining in a purposeful, organized fashion are good ideas and lead to more thoughtful writing scarcely demands the extensive explanation or justification he provides What he describes as pre-writing is something I spend a large chunk of my paper-writing time doing, but I had never really considered it part of my actual writing process. Often I thought of the time I spent taking, collating and editing notes as a way of avoiding the ‘actual’ writing that I felt anxious about. I could convince myself I was being productive by taking notes and agonizing over my outline, but often it was simply a stall tactic.

Identifying and discussing Dewey’s distinction between ‘mulling over’ and reflection was one of the more useful parts of the Rodgers article.  Defining reflective thought as being comprised of “definite units that are linked together so that there is a sustained movement to a common end,” in contrast with the haphazard, process-less mulling over is important because it seems that it would be easy to convince oneself that spending time ‘mulling over’ a topic will generate ideas.  Much like pre-writing it could be a very effective stall tactic.