Oh the joys of writing...

I liked Elbow’s last chapter on freewriting; he had a lot of interesting ideas that I could see myself using in the future. I’m not real sure how I felt about this chapter, though. Personally, I got tangled up in the cooking analogies. I was like say whaaat? The whole process he discussed seemed rather complicated, but maybe that’s just me. I suppose part of the reason is because I don’t recall ever having major issues with writing. The only issue I do recall having is thinking of what to write about, and I do believe that freewriting exercises are great for that sort of thing. The whole time reading this chapter on “The Process of Writing-Cooking,” I kept thinking to myself that he was making it too complicated and adding extra things to writing that I feel would just screw me up. For example, Elbow discussed that when you’re writing something like a research paper and just jotting your thoughts down, that it may lead you to writing a poem or something of the sort, and then by chance you might get an idea from your poem to add into your research paper? That whole thing was just bizarre to me; I can’t see me ever letting myself do that. It just requires too much thinking and seems like a waste of time. Of course, I do believe anything is possible, but that’s just not something I would ever do. That idea also goes along with his section of “cooking as interaction between modes.” I think it would be fun and interesting to take the same idea and write it in different modes, but if I’m trying to write a research paper, again, I would not take the time to do that. I do agree with Elbow that “two heads are better than one.” In my past writing, I recall discussing with someone certain ideas I wanted to include in a paper, and they were able to restructure, as he calls it, my ideas and show me how they would make more sense to someone. In doing that, it helped me think of more ideas I could include and opened many doors to improve the paper I had been working on. I guess the problem I am having with his ideas is how to apply it to research writing and other formal pieces of writing. I feel a lot of his ideas would work well with creative writing but not the former. Or maybe I’m just complicating his ideas more than they should be. Whatever it is, I really am trying to keep an open mind about how I could implement some of Elbow’s ideas into my writing for improvement; I suppose I just have to try them in my writing some time. I felt a bit better when Elbow stated, “If you have a way of writing that works well for you, keep it” (72). It helps me to realize that he is not challenging my way of writing but just trying to teach people about his way of writing. Although, I know I can’t teach my future students my way of writing because that would be real bad, sooo I enjoy learning about other ways because they probably do make more sense.