Charles Bivona's poetry has appeared in Paterson Literary Review, Sensations Magazine, & the Newark Metro. He has also written articles for Cerebration.org, GetOnTheCouch.com, & Suite101.com.

May 6, 2002

In Chapter two of Writing With Power, Peter Elbow suggests the practice of free writing as a method for getting words down on paper.  This method, which he calls, “the best all-around practice in writing” (13), is an old staple in the creative writing and poetry workshops that I have experienced.  Simply writing nonstop for a set amount of time, usually with some kind of prompt, is championed as a method for getting out of your own way, accessing the unconscious mind, and generating fresh and often painful images.

As a creative writer, I’ve used free writing to produce work and to generate ideas.  Elbow mentions this as a value of the technique, but he also has another quality in mind.  “The goal of free writing is in the process, not the product” (13), he claims, and even more drastically he suggests that some free writing is more useful in the trash can, an idea that makes the creative writer in me let out a silent scream of pain.  The thought of tossing the product of my imagination into the trashcan is almost unthinkable, a realization that exposes how attached I am to my own thoughts, but I see Elbow’s point.  For him, free writing is an end in itself, a purposeless purpose to borrow a Kantian idea.  The free writer is practicing his chops, getting used to putting words down on the paper, developing a second nature or a habit for writing.

These are all excellent ideas and they have worked wonders for my creative writing, but I’m left to question how well this process would translate into academic writing.  I was honestly stunned to realize that I had driven a mental wedge between these two types of writing.  Creative writing has always been ‘what I do’, an integral part of my identity.  Academic writing, on the other hand, has been a necessity, something I had to do in order to get a grade and progress in my studies.  Could Elbow’s free writing be an effective bridge between the two distinct writers I have become?  More interestingly, could I use the technique to just get rolling and focus more on the process or would I habitually hunt for ideas in the results?  I decided to try, to use my usual free writing time (about ten to fifteen minutes each morning) to explore ideas about the process.  I decided to free write about free writing.

I reread the Elbow chapter, set an egg timer for ten minutes and went to work. It went well, producing a number of ideas and revealing a fair share of anxiety about writing a paper in general.  Here are some of the results transcribed word for word:

On the value of free writing an exercise I have done for years until I am offered Elbow’s book and he gives me validation– slightly modified I always using free writing wholly as a creative tool–never as a means to an academic paper — instead gruel over each word — cook my ideas as Elbow says — so Peter you have opened me to new avenues — maybe a paper about free writing — using free writing techniques — and incorporation excerpts from freewriting in the body — so writing about the process using the process and mapping the process — but what argument? — thesis?  For free writing but an exploration — a creative free writer turning creative technique on academic work – a will this work question with a conclusion – but can I pull it off?

My mind veered off here to more heated topics, like my cat purring by my feet, but the meat of my general idea is there.  It’s necessary to back track here because the linear nature of this essay gives the impression that I went into this exercise with a set idea of what I wanted to write about, but in reality the free writing phrase “maybe a paper about free writing — using free writing techniques — and incorporation excerpts from free writing in the body –” was the origin of the idea.  When I returned to what I had written days later I was shocked to see the idea for my paper staring me in the face, especially since I didn’t remember writing it.

It’s obvious that already the creative writer in me had hijacked this exercise, I was using the technique to generate ideas, and not just as a way to practice the process.  I decided to use my next freewriting session as a meditation on the process itself.  Here is an excerpt of that attempt.

free writing exploration metaphors for meditation applied to the process – taming a wild monkey or bull – the bull cycle applied to free writing would be interesting or applied to writing in general — have to dig up the story -where? – internet most likely – saturday begin work – five pages in no time — outline? No — well maybe — unconventional for me use of new method – what else? More Zen metaphors –watching thoughts like smoke rising from a fire — focus on breathing – on meditation process – (on writing) – and let thoughts pass — but is it easily transferable – writing very active – physically moving – sitting involves stillness – slowing down – free writing involves moving nonstop – writing whatever comes to mind just to get writing – but it does seem to teach writing – since I’ve done this morning exercise my writing has been easier – more alive – more controlled – so practicing no control fosters control? Does that make sense – perhaps give up control satisfies the need enough to allow focus more readily – perhaps – or perhaps free writing is more controlled than I’m aware of – perhaps this discipline requires the ultimate control – generate nonstop thought for a sustained period of time

Several things are interesting about this last session.  First, I seem to be more focused on creating metaphors for free writing, seemingly attempting not just to do it but also to get a handle on exactly what it is.  I liken it to meditation but find obvious contradictions existing between the two.  I’m also attempting to decide how I will go about beginning the actual work of the essay, even making an appointment with myself–“saturday begin work.”

Yet, beyond the actual content of the free writing, something substantial stands out in both examples, my almost unconscious use of the dash to break up my thoughts.  Elbow might say that this is my internal editor checking up on my creative process but this tendency seems indicative of another trend I noticed in both of my samples.  No matter how chaotic the writing is in the first few lines, eventually something grabs hold of the words, a tentative order becomes established, a narrative is developed.  Elbow mentions this tendency in Writing with Power.

When you write quickly…as in free writing, your syntactic units hang together.  Even if you change your mind in mid-sentence…you produce a clear break.  You don’t try to plaster over two or three syntactic units as one, as you often do in painstaking writing.  Free writing produces syntactic coherence and verbal energy which gradually transfer to your more careful writing.     (16-17)

He claims that in free writing we learn something about our mind, it abhors disorder and when faced with chaos it imposes a skeleton or scaffolding to serve as an unconscious makeshift structure.  Perhaps it is this unconscious reflex that is truly exercised in the practice.  Learning to get out of the way and let the mind impose its unconscious order on our conscious chaos may be the essence of what Elbow calls the mysterious underground process that leads to powerful writing.

All of this sounds great, but it leaves me with a sense of uneasiness about my own writing prejudices and the metaphors I employ to think about my own process.  Writing as a journey toward myself or as an exploration of my unconscious mind are strong ideas that have been instilled in me from the beginning of my creative life, but these too must be evaluated scrutinized.  My inherent expressive tendencies are obvious in both of my writing metaphors along with an inherent self-consciousness.

In an essay entitled “Writing with Teachers: A Conversation with Peter Elbow,” David Bartholomae argues that the strong turn young writers take toward this kind of individualism is rooted in an anxiety about all that precedes them.

Students write in a space defined by all the writing that has preceded them, writing the academy insistently draws together: in the library, in the reading list, in the curriculum.  This is the busy, noisy, intertextual space–one usually hidden in our representations of the classroom; one that becomes a subject in the classroom when we ask young writers to think about, or better yet, confront their situatedness (481).

He uses what I call a ‘crowded room’ metaphor to talk about writing.  Whereas Elbow’s writer is alone with himself and a blank page, Bartholmae’s is surrounded by all of the writers and cultural influences that have ever been, some out in the open, and some elusive and hidden.  It’s no surprise that realizing one’s ‘situatedness’ in a broader span of history sends many student writers fleeing into a solipsistic wonderland, but in Bartholomae’s model even the writing teachers are plagued by this anxiety and it invariably shows in the structure of the classroom.

There are many classrooms where students are asked to imagine that they can clear out a space to write on their own, to express their own thoughts and ideas, not reproduce those of others….The open classroom; a free writing.  This is the master trope (481).

In a world of postmodern discourses this free space for writing seems like a fantasy.  Roland Barthes long ago announced the death of the author and Barthomae claims that Elbow’s work is part of a vast project that is attempting to revitalize the corpse of the creator and put her back on her rightful throne.

I find that I agree with Bartholomae for the most part, I understand the deep desire to escape the influence of a long literary history and am also in touch with the impossibility of such an escape.  But I don’t think that his argument renders free writing useless and I think his accusations about elbows resurrection plans are a bit extreme.  Free writing as a tool can benefit from an awareness of ‘situatedness.’

To support this opinion I can turn to more of my own experience.  In an Introduction to Graduate Literary Studies course I read Barthes’ semiotic analysis of the Eiffel tower and was asked to create a similar essay analyzing a sign in my own culture.  As Bartholmae pointed out, the particular ‘crowded room’ I was being asked to enter, one populated by giants and theories of which I had only a cursory understanding, intimidated me.  I didn’t, however, flee into the method, but instead decided to mimic Barthes in an attempt to honor the influence he had on me and to use academic free writing to get my ideas straight.  In the essay Barthes argues that the Eiffel tower is the perfect sign because it serves no purpose other than signifying Paris.  It was this sense of uselessness that gave me an idea. I wanted to analyze the image of the lazy male in some of the commercials I had been seeing. To me this was the perfect sign of what I called Americanness. I free wrote for ten minutes and produced the following:

the commercial american fat slob–relaxing–slothfully eating the worst food–lethargy and apathy a badge of honor–the gut as the symbol­­–the sign of entitlement–americanness–the remote control his weapon or tool–avoids vegetables indeed in some commercials he is wholly unaware of the existence of vegetables–doesn’t cook or clean or even work it seems–he is the heroic couch potato–validated laziness–an image of the new value of sloth–his passivity is absolute–his apathy complete–his lethargy raised almost to an insinuated art–he conquers the world             from the couch accidentally–When success falls upon him he shrugs and continues his deep TV watching–the wife the only active member of the commercial universe–seen as neurotic hyperactive or just a plain nag as she tries to rouse the motionless hero into action

I returned to this raw material a few days later and picked out the ideas I really like, the slob as a hero, the wife doing battle with the hero, and his motionless success in the universe of the ad.  It was clear that the hero metaphor could give the piece a powerful ironic twist.  I reworked the ideas and wrote this opening paragraph.

Lethargy rules the day in today’s American commercial.  A man—it’s almost always a man—sits on a couch or a lounge chair, apathetically watching a television.  He is the great hero-slob, sleepy eyed and disheveled, fixated on food and sports, and sometimes engaged in a battle of “wits” with his actively insistent yet completely non-threatening wife.  In the universe of the ad he is the very spectacle of Americanness–uneducated but empowered, indifferent but somehow blessed, inactive but always managing to come out on top.  His foes are either passively vanquished or initiated into his world of inaction.

I wasn’t sure how to keep the idea going.  I had two basic characters, the hero-slob and his wife, now I needed to cite commercial examples of them engaged in the mock battle of wits I had promised.  I spent a few days free writing this time, using the method to remember the commercials that had led me to this idea and how they annoyed me with their generalized portrayal of gender roles.  Then it was just a matter of rereading the twenty or so pages and choosing my favorites.  The essay filled out nicely with solid examples from a few commercials and a moral ending to boot.  I include that ending here.

The husband tricks the wife into going to Sears to buy tools, while she hatches a plot to get him to eating healthier.  The wife nurtures the children and sings them to sleep; the husband gets tongue-tied and can’t talk to his son about sex, drugs, college, the future, or anything.  The wife accepts the man as a bad communicator and looks at him lovingly for trying.  She gets diamonds.  He gets peace and quiet.  No one really communicates, so no one ever gets angry, starts an argument, or leaves.  The commercial family is also a spectacle of Americanness—a sign of the lies we like to tell ourselves about our family values.

Based on my success, I am inclined to endorse Elbow’s free writing process as a useful tool for academic as well as creative writing, but I remain open to being dissuaded.  Free writing has its limitations and I agree with Bartholmae that it seems to ignore the importance of influence and reading.  But no one theory of literature or composition should be accepted in full at the exclusion of all others.  Free writing is one of many tools that a good writer should have under his belt while the search for new methods of composition continues.  I cite the advise of the Black Feminism critic Deborah E. McDowell who said “we should…salvage what we find useful in past methodologies, reject what we do not, and where necessary, move toward inventing new methods” (1428).  This is a sound plan for the critical as well as the creative writer.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Bartholomae, David.  “Writing with Teachers: A Conversation with Peter Elbow.” College Composition and Communication. 46.1 (Feb. 95): 62.71.
• Elbow, Peter. Writing With Power.  New York:  Oxford U. Press, 1998.
• McDowell, Deborah E.  “New Directions for Black Feminist Criticism.” The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. David H. Richter, Ed. New York: Bedford Books, 1998.  Pp. 1422-30.

INTRODUCTION

Much like the debate over the literary canon, the process vs. current traditional composition pedagogy debate proposes some high-stakes claims about what should be taught in the writing classroom.  And with the advancement of Post-Process theories the ramifications become even more urgent as “post-process theory seems to resist pedagogical application because of…claims that writing cannot be taught.”

As the theorists reprimand each other, however, the teachers on the ground of the composition classroom are forced to contend with the fact that, as in any field, theory and practice are often on opposite ends of the professional spectrum.  Despite Lad Tobin’s obvious enthusiasm for the revolutionary paradigm shift of process pedagogy, he ultimately admits that “the bitter debates…in the professional journals…caused much less conflict in the classroom, where practitioners usually found something to borrow from each approach.”

Since I am still a novice instructor – a mere seven years of instruction reflected on my CV – these debates are of some interest to me.  However, the pedagogical imperative is always at me heals, and when I walk into the classroom unconscious action must replace conscious speculation.  I have learned that the composition class is a living organism of which the instructor is merely one organ.  The wisest move, I have found, is to approach each new group of students with a malleable syllabus and an open-ness to borrow heftily from whatever theoretical bent gets the students thinking and writing.  There is a time for process, a time for rhetoric, a time for collaborative group work, and a time to throw down and open the classroom to the inherent slippery playfulness of language.  At the risk of being labeled new age, I would argue that this instinct for the rhythm of the group dynamic is an ever evolving and subtle sense of the classroom energy.  With this idea in mind, it is in their best interest for composition instructors to familiarize themselves with the breadth and scope of pedagogical theory, and then forget it.  Relegate it to the unconscious mind.  Fill your improv bank, and then trust it

It is in honor of this drive towards the improvisational that I wish to explore some of the theories that have taken up residence in my mind.  So, each section of this article will focus on a different theoretical stance that has enhanced my classroom performance.  It is my hope that these pedagogical meditations will help focus my teaching and deepen my trust in my own dancing mind.

THE WRITING CENTER AND ME

…the unique circumstances of every instance of application require a unique appropriation and implementation of theory into practice … [N]o single theory can dictate writing center instruction.  Instead, we must reshape theory to fit our particular needs in the particular historically located situations in which writing center practitioners find themselves.

I begin with this interesting instance of Eric Hobson citing himself because, although it refers to the writing center specifically, it perfectly encapsulates my overall theoretical bent of composition pedagogy.  I have already referred to myself as something of an improvisational instructor, one who prefers to fill myself with theoretical fodder and then enter the classroom with cannons blazing.  This is always an exercise in self-trust.  And where this self-trust begins to wear thin is where the writing center becomes relevant to my thinking.

I love the fantasy image of the enlightened professor breezing into the classroom to transform the minds of the students, but the realities of the pedagogical situation rarely adhere to this ruggedly individualistic idea of instruction.  Alas, several times in my still-fledgling teaching career I’ve had to admit my limitations and refer my students to the campus writing center.  However, as my ego wounds healed, and after I started working as a tutor myself, I realized the vastly different dynamic at play in the classroom vs. the one-on-one tutoring session.  In the classroom, it is much easier to identify the handful of active students that will support your pedagogical performance.  The shy and silent types, which are often the struggling students, tend to fade back and let the more active students, who tend to need instruction the least, dominate.  Despite an instructor’s best efforts, this dynamic is very difficult to transform in the classroom moment.  The ramifications of this problem are immediately apparent in the writing assignments.  The more proficient and outspoken student exhibits deeper analytical ability and more complex compositional feats.  The silent tend to struggle with various grammar, style, and/or syntax problems that only one-on-one instruction can effectively address.

Yet, I am as concerned about the ramifications of this split as Hobson is.  In his essay “Writing Center Pedagogy,” he discusses the history of the writing center and reminds us of a particularly ugly period when, as he puts it:

The relationship was not pedagogically pretty: writing courses dealt with writing (e.g., invention, drafting, revision, development of authors’ voices, etc.) while writing center staff were allocated the demanding and ethically questionable task of “cleaning up” writers’ editing skills, of eradicating minority dialects and “nonstandard” grammars, and “dealing with” non-native writers.

Putting aside the ethical ramifications of this problem for the moment, I would argue that the writing center should never be a dumping ground for the issues that the composition instructor would rather not deal with.  The classroom environment should be stretched to its limit and office hours adequately utilized for one-on-one conferences.  These efforts by the instructor should be supported and enhanced, not compensated for, by a writing center staff.

THE FLOW OF THE INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE

…it is time to call a truce in the old warfare between primary experience, seen as supposedly separable from intellectual interference, and secondary talk about experience, seen as devoid of creative and personal qualities.

By stating this unifying wish at the midpoint of Clueless in Academe, Gerald Graff reiterates the desire for synthesis that echoes throughout much of the scholarship on academic discourse.  But rather than offering a pointed solution, a move reminiscent of the championing  of a hybrid discourse by Patricia Bizzell – a discourse that combines “traditional academic discourse with … other ways of using language that are more comfortable for the new academics,” Graff turns the tools of the analytic discourse on itself to identify exactly where it is ailing.  The exploration of what is to be done to rejuvenate the discourse occupies his periphery as a more central question is addressed: namely, what exactly is it within this specialized language system that alienates the student.

Yet despite his rigorous exploration, Graff does seem to err on the side of a more holistic approach to familiarizing students to the game of academia.  In fact, he even extends the metaphorical relationship between what he callsarguespeak and game playing by referencing the mental practices of professional athletes.  Although this comparison, he admits, strains credulity, the overlap is penetrating.  The rigidity of the traditional discourse needs to be opened to the flow of the individual experience without losing its intellectual rigor.  And the realizations of David Bartholomae’s “Inventing the University,” the fascination with the novice’s ability to assume the posture of a discourse they are not yet familiar with, may be the first step to respecting what our students have to teach us.

THE CLUB OF CRITICAL THINKING

…teachers who discourage a student from studying criticism are withholding from him or her the discourse that they themselves take for granted.  Such teachers remind me of millionaires who exhort the poor to quit being so obsessed with material wealth.

In the spirited ninth chapter of Clueless in Academe, Gerald Graff gently reprimands his colleagues for their failure to initiate students into the club of critical thinking.  This mild rebuke struck a pedagogical nerve for me, because on reflection I realized that I was guilty of the very failure that Graff was highlighting.  In my own Comp classes I have consistently failed to expose my students to the conversations of the critics.  My courses have always focused primarily on classroom discussion in the hopes that my students would make critical discoveries in, what I now realize, was a critical vacuum.  In fact, if pressed to the point of candor, I would have to admit a probable grain of egoism in this approach.  Indeed, if anything resembling a professional critical voice was going to be present in my classroom, by God it was going to be my voice.

This self realization carried half my attention away from Graff’s text in favor of a mental revision of my syllabus.  I was initially intrigued by the idea of including passages from critical essays as supplementary reading to the primary literature.  However, I tend to shy away from anything that short circuits original thought and my fear is that a professional critic’s opinion on a short story would more often than not inspire an intimidated acquiescence from a college freshman.  And knowing how students tend to shrink in the face of even my own somewhat official sounding opinion, I decided to tinker with the idea.

What I propose is a coupling of a short story with a critical piece that deals with the social issue tackled by the story rather than a critical appraisal of the fiction itself.  I would encourage the students to compare the issue of the critical social problem piece with the theme of the story and/or the author’s motivation to write such a narrative.  This could be additionally useful if the professor wished to encourage students to historicize the literature.  A short story written at the time of the civil rights movement could be coupled with a short excerpt of a critical appraisal of that movement.  A piece of fiction dealing with issues of homosexuality – Ha Jin’s “The Bridegroom,” for example – could be coupled with a New York Times article on the gay marriage debate or a critical essay arguing for or against gay unions.  This approach, I feel, would introduce students to the discourse of argumentation, without making them feel self conscious about their opinions in the face of a much more advanced critic.

SCIENCE SPEAK

The aptly named third section of Cross-Talk in Composition Theoryturns to a more cognitive view of the pedagogical question.  Indeed, rather than wrestling with the how and why of the classroom and composing process, the two essays for this week are far more focused on  questions of what.  What exactly occurs in the mind of the training writer? What can teachers of writing gain from an understanding of composition epistemology?  Weighty questions for sure, with some equally weighty speculations.

Patricia Bizzel tackles the developmental stages of the college educated mind.  She utilizes the schema of William Perry to possibly illuminate the process of development that the training writer goes through on the way to mastery.  Mercifully, in the concluding paragraphs of her essay, Bizzel addresses the question that had been gnawing at my ear throughout.

Of what use…is Perry’s work to college writing teachers?  I think his scheme can help us to understand why the differences occur in student writing, even if we can not apply his classification scheme rigidly. 

A noble sentiment, to be sure, but despite how counterintuitive it is for me to argue against an attempt to understand, I am still left perplexed as to how this understanding will facilitate the teaching of composition.  Do we not risk becoming as pointless as the theoretical economist who can explain, in tandem, the reasons for a recession while failing to offer any relief to the folks on the unemployment line?  Even Ann Berthoff’s essay, “Is Teaching Still Possible,” with its cognitive theory laden sub-title, “Writing, Meaning, and Higher Order Reasoning,” seems theoretical to the point of pointlessness.  And her suggestion that writing teachers should strive to “assure that students are conscious of their minds in action,” although deeply touching to my heart for its Zen-like quality, seems simply impractical.

Is it hopelessly romantic of me to believe that one still learns to write by writing?  Is it merely quaint to see myself as a mentor, someone who has struggled with his own composition for several decades, and may be able to offer a helpful suggestion for overcoming some of the more common obstacles?  Yes, I bring my own ideology to my instruction.  I do often catch myself attempting to make my students write like me, but isn’t that the cognition I should focus on, my own cognition as an instructor?

In the end, as interesting as it is to speculate about the phenomenology of the writing process, I think the pedagogical imperative renders it useless to the classroom grunt.  Let the theoreticians wile away the hours compiling data and speculatively marveling at the mind’s mechanisms.  These kids keep writing sentence fragments, so I’m giving them my attention.

________

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berthoff, Ann E.  “Is Teaching Still Possible?: Writing, Meaning, and Higher Order Reasoning,” Cross-Talk in Composition Theory: A Reader 2^nd Edition, Ed. Victor Villanueva.  Illinois: NCTE, 2003.

Bizzell, Patricia.  “Hybrid Academic Discourse: What, Why, How.” Composition Studies, Vol. 27, No. 2, Fall 1999, 11.

Bizzell, Patricia.  “William Perry and Liberal Education.”  Cross-Talk in Composition Theory: A Reader 2^nd Edition.  Victor Villanueva, Ed.  Illinois: NCTE, 2003.

Graff, Gerald.  Clueless in Academe.  New Haven: Yale UP, 2003.

Hobson, Eric H.  “Writing Center Pedagogy.”  A Guide to Composition Padagogies, Gary Tate, et. al. Eds.  New York: Oxford, 2001.

Kastman Breuch, Lee-Ann M.  “Post-Process ‘Pedagogy’: A Philosophical Exercise.”  Cross Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader. Victor Villanueva, Ed.  Illinois: NTCE, 2003.

Tobin, Lad.  “Process Pedagogy.”  A Guide to Composition Padagogies.  Gary Tate, et. al. Eds. New York: Oxford, 2001.