Brain Relief

This week we went back to reading Elbow and I felt like my brain got a little relief...

Teacherless writing seems like a great idea if you can find the time to do it. I can't really imagine finding a group of seven people who are all genuinely interested in improving their writing and also have the dedication to stick with the commitment. Regardless, I think that the advice that Elbow gives us on how to critique others' papers can be extremely useful in the classroom.

One of the sections that really stuck out to me was on page 83. It is here that Elbow talks about the nervousness we all feel when we share with our audience. "Even if you don't feel it (nervousness) as you write, that only means you've separated your experience of audience from your experience of writing." He says that reading out loud brings the sense of audience back to us. That is so true, isn't it? I've never thought about it this way before, but fear of audience is one of the major reasons that I came to mental roadblocks when actually writing papers.

Elbow makes a point to tell us that we should tell the writer how we were feeling as we were reading over the piece. This is a great way to really get insight into how your writing is making other people feel. So many times writing workshops consist of our peers picking out missing commas and spelling errors. I can find them myself. What would be far more helpful to me is to know how my paper is affecting the reader. I think it would be somewhat disheartening to pour your heart into something only to have your peers give you a negative reaction. I do, however, think that by doing this we would find a way to reach the audience on a deeper level, and therefore be better writers. In a more technical sense, it could help to point out areas of the paper that may be confusing to the reader.

I absolutely loved the metaphorical exercises (90). As I said in the past, I generally don't think in metaphors. It could just be the dork in me coming out, but I really do think I would have a lot of fun using these drills. I think it would be helpful to the people doing the critiquing because they would be forced to think outside of the box. Maybe if I practiced with his list of metaphors, I would have a much easier time of coming up with metaphors of my own.

Finally, I think that one of the most import statements that Elbow makes (at least to me), is that it is the writer's job to make his/her own decisions. I think it is important to listen to what others have to say, but ultimately your piece of writing is in your own hands.