Writing, Pre-Writing, and the Fear Factor
1. There is no substitute for having absorbed and assimilated "subject matter." It's one reason I've always been reluctant to put the name "Research Paper" on a piece written during one semester (or a tiny portion thereof); I'm inclined toward "Documented Essay," which indicates that we're actually practicing techniques for using other people's ideas in an essay of our own. Arthur Barker, my Milton professor at U of I, made it clear that writing our two thirty-page essays for him required us to take Incompletes for the course, until we could finish writing a "Real Research Paper"; and we were Ph.D. students, presumably adept at doing RPs!
2. Though we can learn (and be reminded of) some particular elements of good writing, there's no substitute for having developed fluent, literate writing skills over time; it's not a thing you can learn to do with a "trick" or two. Every now and then I find that I can say to a freshman, "You've already learned how to make good sentences, which is the hardest thing to teach." if that skill is in place, we can move far more easily to essay structure, strengthening ideas, incorporating "outside material," etc.
3. "Free-writing" serves a very specific purpose, I think, different from the more comprehensive, multi-faceted "pre-writing." Too often, I find students at every level of coursework fearful of writing (not to mention bored with it), so I use free- or speed-writing to knock down some of those fears, temporarily. It doesn't make you know more, for sure, but it really can help to DIS-cover experiences, ideas, images, "inklings" that are often obscured, incapacitated, even paralyzed, by all the "correct-me-if-I'm-wrong-and-my-teacher-tells-me-I'm-wrong-most-of-the-time" apparatus that gets laid on and about what we DO actually know and COULD actually write about if we weren't close to paranoia about disapproval (grades). (Now, do NOT take this comment as being in support of the "everything-you-do-is-really-wonderful-because-you-tried-mydear" school of Self-Esteem. I hold that a teacher should be an encouraging coach but not an undiscriminating approver.)
4. So, "techniques" for writing are various and varying, from one writer to another AND from any single writer's moment today to the same writer's moments tomorrow. We use what works--sometimes this and sometimes that. What you can learn in Writin' School is the wide range of what MIGHT work.
Esperance!
--RWH
2. Though we can learn (and be reminded of) some particular elements of good writing, there's no substitute for having developed fluent, literate writing skills over time; it's not a thing you can learn to do with a "trick" or two. Every now and then I find that I can say to a freshman, "You've already learned how to make good sentences, which is the hardest thing to teach." if that skill is in place, we can move far more easily to essay structure, strengthening ideas, incorporating "outside material," etc.
3. "Free-writing" serves a very specific purpose, I think, different from the more comprehensive, multi-faceted "pre-writing." Too often, I find students at every level of coursework fearful of writing (not to mention bored with it), so I use free- or speed-writing to knock down some of those fears, temporarily. It doesn't make you know more, for sure, but it really can help to DIS-cover experiences, ideas, images, "inklings" that are often obscured, incapacitated, even paralyzed, by all the "correct-me-if-I'm-wrong-and-my-teacher-tells-me-I'm-wrong-most-of-the-time" apparatus that gets laid on and about what we DO actually know and COULD actually write about if we weren't close to paranoia about disapproval (grades). (Now, do NOT take this comment as being in support of the "everything-you-do-is-really-wonderful-because-you-tried-mydear" school of Self-Esteem. I hold that a teacher should be an encouraging coach but not an undiscriminating approver.)
4. So, "techniques" for writing are various and varying, from one writer to another AND from any single writer's moment today to the same writer's moments tomorrow. We use what works--sometimes this and sometimes that. What you can learn in Writin' School is the wide range of what MIGHT work.
Esperance!
--RWH
posted by Bob Hill at 5:16 AM
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