Elbow? No.

I cannot even begin to tell you how much I abhor Elbow’s preferred method of improvement, the dreaded freewrite. Some students may celebrate the opportunity to write whatever their brain desires for ten minutes at a time. However, I groan internally. Perhaps Elbow is right, in that it is the lack of control that causes my discomfort. I always seem to digress to the finer points in life: sleep, food, drink. Just stick me in a corner, feed and water me instead. When it comes to my writing, I think it will do me more good.

I understand Elbow’s point in that “the main thing about freewriting is that it is nonediting” (6). Supposedly, if we let go of this societal tendency to obsess with mistakes, our writing will be all the better for it. However, I cannot help but to disagree. I don’t think our voices become deadened, according to Elbow, by editing as we write. I feel I need a sense of order to produce anything worth reading. What Elbow suggests involves a certain amount of chaos, a muddled and confusing foray of scrambled words onto a page. All these tactics for anti-writing? Bedlam. I fail to see the connection between a tactic so sloppily produced and the end result as being one that isn’t the same.

I suppose Elbow’s solution is that of a furious sort of editing, where words run for cover and whole paragraphs find their knees quivering in fear. I will concede to him in that the process of editing while we simultaneously write does cause a sense of fierce devotion to the words I have written to arise within me. What is wrong with believing strongly in what we write, with room for suggestion? I will never be able to detach myself completely. It may make me a stronger writer, but as people, is that what we truly want and desire?

I found Peter Elbow to be in possession of some valid points, but in summation of them, it appears that I have allowed the stifling voices of teachers past to influence my rigid opinion. However, after viewing Elbow’s writings and finding them to be no new product of genius, I cannot say that I am envious of his method. I think that how we get to the final product doesn’t matter, as long as we have a process that enables us to make that literary journey in comfort. In my future classroom, I will employ these strategies for those who have problems with writing, but I do not foresee myself using them to any great extent.