How to become a better writer, reader, and listener

It seems to me the participants of Elbow’s teacherless writing class are like the cuts on a diamond. The writer is the main facet on top with the readers as the cuts around the sides that give the diamond its shape and sparkle. The main facet may be on top, but it needs the cuts on the sides to bring out its brilliance. For the diamond all the cuts are important in the overall appearance. The same is true for the participants of Elbow’s teacherless writing class. Everyone in the class is of equal importance. The writer is no more important than the reader and vice versa. The main point of this class as I see it is to help writers understand how multiple people react to their writing so that they can improve it. It trains readers to really pay attention to how a piece of writing makes them feel and be able to describe it. It also provides the writer with an opportunity to improve their listening skills.

At the beginning of the chapter Elbow says to imagine that you are blind and deaf, in “perpetual darkness and silence”. He goes and says, “You send out words as best you can but no words come back” (76). This statement reminded me of the blog I am writing about my son’s football season. I know I have several readers because they ask me when I will post another blog, but no one ever tells me what they think about it. I don’t ask partially because I am a little gun- shy when it comes to my writing, even though I know it would help me become a better writer to hear their reactions. Like the cuts in the diamond make it sparkle, I know the feedback would help add a little shimmer to my writing.

The problem I have with the teacherless writing class is that to actually start one I think every participant would need to read this chapter. When I first started to read it I thought it sounded good on paper, but I know from my own experiences, I am not very good at providing feedback to someone else which is a main part of this type of class. It was not until Elbow described pointing, summarizing, telling, and showing that I finally had some great ideas about how to provide meaningful feedback to another writer. I actually used some of these ideas with an essay and found that I was better able to formulate into words how the writing affected me. For example, in the essay I read I felt the writer was using the whole essay as a metaphor for what he was really trying to say. That would be Elbow’s #14 on the ‘showing’ tips.

I agree with Elbow that in this type of class negative comments should be banned for the first three or four classes (96). I am not an experienced writer so I have not had much opportunity to have my writing reviewed by another writer. The first time I did was a shock! After I gave my piece of writing to the reader the first thing he said to me was do I have thick skin? This conjured up all kinds of anxiety in me until he returned my paper and we talked about his reaction to my writing. He got a totally different impression of what I thought I was trying to relay. This was a great lesson for me about how once my writing leaves my hands; it can be interpreted in many ways. I think this lesson could have been learned without being put on the defense right away by the negative comment.

I thought Elbow’s advice to the writer on listening was as important as the feedback the reader provides for the writer. If the writer does not try and understand where the reader is coming from the feedback is useless. It will just drive a wedge between the writer and the reader maybe carrying over to future classes. When I read tabloid stories I almost always assume they are not true, but I have come to realize that there is always an element of truth somewhere in what gets reported. I believe the writer must think the same way about what the reader perceived.

I can see how this class would work as a workshop but I think only parts of it would be useful in a school setting. In school the teacher would have to act as the ‘general’ and not the teacher and hope that the students are mature enough to handle the process of this type of class.