A New Way of Writing and Thinking About Writing

I had so many light bulb, a-ha moments while reading the first two chapters of Elbow’s book. I do wonder how my writing and education experience would have been different if I had been exposed to Elbow’s writing methods earlier.

Freewriting is something I had never really done before. I’ll admit, it felt odd at first when we did it in class on Wednesday. I’m one of those people who can be self-conscious about their writing, even when it’s not shown to other people. It can be quite intimidating at first to just let go and “vomit” on the page. But once I did, I could see the benefits. You are allowed to be much more open with your ideas and you don’t have to censor your thoughts.

Elbow goes through the “typical” writing process and shows where it could be flawed. Almost every point made in that second chapter hit home for me. I never hated writing but the process would frustrate me. Outlines were one thing I always had problems with. I found them limiting rather than helpful. I always had an idea of what I wanted to write and the points I was going to bring up, but that could always change as I began writing. Often, outlines were made weeks before the actual paper was due. That’s plenty of time for my viewpoint on the subject to change or for me to discover new things about the subject. I gave a little cheer when I read this line on page 31: “Whereas when I do get writing, I discover that much of the preparation time was a waste of time.”

The other major a-ha moment for me was when Elbow talked about how the beginning can sometimes be the most difficult part when it comes to traditional writing. Everyone labors over how to make those first few sentences amazing. You struggle and struggle with this at the beginning when you could be focusing more on the rest of the writing and then go back to the beginning when the rest of your paper is fleshed out. This makes compete sense, yet many people do the opposite and become frustrated when those perfect opening sentences don’t appear right away.

As much as Elbow has sold me on his techniques, I do think it will be hard at first to adopt them into my own writing practice. His natural, organic way of writing is so radically different to what I was taught. Like Elbow said on page 32, the traditional model of writing “preaches control.” It’s difficult to give up that control and give in to the writing. But in the end, if Elbow is right, you end up with increased control over your writing.