“Syntax often breaks down just at the point where a new or significant meaning is beginning to break out”

When writing feels hard, perhaps it is because you are on the cusp of saying something significant or interesting? The thought is oddly comforting to me. Donald Murray originally described this connectionin his essay “Making Meaning Clear: The Logic of Revision,” published in the Journal of Basic Writing in 1984. Murray wrote: [I]n fact, syntax often breaks down just at the point where a new or significant meaning is beginning to break out of its shell. That meaning has an awkward and clumsy time of it, but if the writer listens carefully and nurtures the meaning, it may grow into significance. Or it may not. It may have to be put aside. But first it has to be understood before it can be rejected. One concern about teaching writing in the age of AI is that generating a first draft that has surface-level plausibility and smoothness has now become very low-cost. As a result, for many practical real-world purposes, the task of collaborator with an AI-written first draft is to figure out…