Harris vs. Sullivan

In Harris’ book, Rewriting, after reading the introduction and the first chapter entitled “Coming to Terms,” I am beginning to see how Joseph Harris defines reading and writing. In their most basic form, reading and writing is a process. That is what I took away from his text. When conducting a draft or any type of writing that contains support from someone else’s work, Harris says that the first step is to be able to get the author’s point across in one’s own words. This is defined as coming to terms with the resource that one is using. Coming to terms is just one of five steps in the process of “rewriting.” The other four are: forwarding, countering, taking an approach, and revising. This idea of rewriting is the art of taking someone’s ideas and “drawing from, commenting on, and adding to the work of others.”

Even though I personally do not see many parallels between Harris’ understanding of writing and Sullivan’s understanding of blogging, I do see one main similarity. Both take on the form of a response to something. Harris’ way of writing is a technique to write a good response/argument to another work, just as Sullivan’s way of blogging can be a response to a political, economic, social, etc. event/idea. However, Harris uses a more formal way of writing where there is a long and drawn out process of drafting a text, where Sullivan uses the form of a blog post where it is more spontaneous and less thought out.

I am not saying that one style of writing is more advantageous than the other. Both styles of writing are beneficial in their own ways. Harris’ style is more formal/professional whereas Sullivan’s style is more informal.