#peter elbow

[sunfoxfic]

It is simply a fact that most of the time you can't find the right words till you know exactly what you are saying, but that you can't know exactly what you are saying till you find just the right words. The consequence is that you must start by writing the wrong meanings in the wrong words; but keep writing till you get to the right meanings in the right words.

- Peter Elbow, Writing without teachers

[mohawkmind]

Peter Elbow, Professor Who Transformed Freshman Comp, Dies at 89

His struggles with writer’s block led him to create a process that favored an expressive, personal approach over rigid academic conventions

RIP. I took quite a bit from his work when I started teaching composition, and even more as an editor and writer.

[journalwritingprompts]

[the-end-of-art]

"No wonder [writing] is agony." From Writing Without Teachers by Peter Elbow.

[the-end-of-art]

You are always right and always wrong

You are always right and always wrong by Peter Elbow

As the reader:

You do your job as a reader best in the light of this paradox.

You are always right in that no one is ever in a position to tell you what you perceive and experience. You must have a kind of faith or trust: not that your perception is always accurate, but that the greatest accuracy comes from using it more and listening to it better; and that the most valuable thing you can do for the writer is to tell him what you really see and how you really react.

But you are always wrong in that you never see accurately enough, experience fully enough. There are always things in the words you cannot get. You must always put more energy into trying to have other people’s perceptions and experiences – trying to make yourself more agile, more flexible, more refined. Don’t stubbornly stay locked into your own impressions just because they are yours.

In short, you must be simultaneously sure of yourself and humble. Easier said than done. But it’s worth the practice this class provides since it’s just what’s needed in countless other situations.

 As the writer:

You, as writer, as well as reader, benefit most if you listen in the spirit of this paradox.

You are always right in that your decision about the writing is always final. They give you their experience, you decide what to do about it. You are in charge. You are the only one making decisions.

But you are always wrong in that you can never quarrel with their experience – never quarrel even with their report of their experience. And you must assume that you are never good enough at sharing their perception – shedding your blinders, getting into their shoes.

Like the reader, you must be simultaneously sure of yourself and humble.

  From Writing Without Teachers by Peter Elbow.

[moonlightandmarble]

Think about the types of feedback you can get. You can write a paper, well--not a paper--you can do writing--maybe a paper--and not show it to anybody--just want to write and get my thoughts straight. Maybe later I'll throw it to somebody, but now it's just for me. Not only is there no feedback, it's not even going to an audience. Then in contrast I can write something, and I can give it to an audience to read because I want their help, only there's a special kind of help that most people don't know how to give and most people don't know how to ask for, which is to say, "Please read it, and say thank you," and actually what's most useful is, "Please let me read this out loud to you and when I'm done, say thank you." And that doesn't sound like much help. It's great help, it doesn't take much time, it's very simple, but the act of reading it out loud in the presence of a person, I mean, earlier I was talking about reading out loud for yourself because it's so useful for writing, but reading out loud in the presence of a person is magic. It just helps you see your words much more clearly, and they don't have to do anything except say thank you, and it helps if they can mean it because you've given them a gift of your writing and they should say thank you. So that's the second kind of audience. This is the relationship between writing and audience. The third kind of feedback--the third relationship--I write it, and I don't just keep it to myself. I give it to people. Ideally I read it out loud to people, and then I ask them, "Please tell me some things you like about this writing. Tell me the parts that were interesting to you. Tell me the sentences that you liked. Tell me the words that you thought were strong or good. Tell me whatever you like. Find some things even if you don't think it was great. Do me a favor. Find some things that are pretty good in here that you like or that you could like. So I want some feedback, but I don't want any criticism." Now that's a discipline too, it's a very strong discipline to learn to ask for that, because you have to be pushy because they're going to start criticizing. "No, no, no, wait, wait, I only want to hear what's good. I only want to hear what you liked. Later on maybe next week, I'll get some criticism; just tell me what you like." This is very powerful. This is very powerful, you have to be strong to ask for it, and you have to make do it. It's very powerful because this is how people learn. If someone tells you what you did wrong, maybe you're trying to learn some skill like hitting a tennis ball, and if they just tell you what you did wrong, you can try and stop doing it. "Don't do that." That can help--don't do it--but that doesn't help you do it right. The way you learn is if someone tells you what you did right, so you need to hear some good bits of our writing. That's how we'll learn, and from a teacher's point of view, the teacher who gives that kind of feedback, and teachers need to learn to give that kind of feedback... They would say, "You know, it's not such a good paper and I could criticize it next week, but right now I'm just going to tell you the good bits because I'm going to point to what you've done right in this paper and all I'm going to say is do more of that, do more of that, do more of that." That's how you learn. Do more of something you did right. And then the fourth stage is I write it, I read it, they tell me what's good, and they tell me what doesn't work so well, and I'm getting criticism. But by that time, I can benefit from the criticism. So the most killing thing about peer feedback from peer--well feedback from peers or from teachers--is if everybody jumps into criticism. And not only does that make you want to jump out the window, it's not good for your writing. We need the private writing, we need the reading out loud and only thank you, we need the reading or giving and only hearing what's good, and then we can benefit from the criticism. So that actually is a pretty good overview of some of the crucial principles for feedback or evaluation.

Peter Elbow, “On Receiving Feedback”

[shopef5462-blog]

When we started our readings for the semester, I wondered what Dr. Hawkins’ intention was, aside for the prescribed learning outcomes. Each reading built upon the other from Haas to Hooks. Right now, I am sitting here on about an hour into writing this blog, and I have come up with two sentences excluding this one. I think about what I am going to say, and then I go over it, again and again, checking its validity, grammar, and fluency. I am also going through a mental checklist of how I was taught to write: make a hook, introduce the author and the work you will be discussing, start out speaking generally and narrow your discussion to your thesis statement. All of this is going on before I have even settled on my main ideas. This is how I get stuck. It is like a mental form of constipation. To remedy I go back over Peter Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers. His solution is to just write no matter what keep going even if it sounds stupid, by doing so you clear out the clutter in your mind and get to your main points. It was during that process that Bell Hooks’ Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice to Freedom came to mind. Hooks refers to the classroom as being a source of oppression, and while I try to write this, I identify with that idea. I get so caught up in the structure that I lose my voice. When I read her book, she was making sense. I understood it and could identify with it. It was not until I actually dealt with it that it completely sunk in. While reading, I thought I was past such things because I was aware of them. My awareness did nothing for me. When my voice is not stifled by sticking to the structure, I managed to write easily, steadily, and coherently in about fifteen minutes.

[queserahserah-blog1]

Peter Elbow

Peter Elbow describes revision in three levels: reseeing or rethinking, reworking and reshaping, and copyediting/proofreading for mechanics and usage. Elbow stresses that these levels must happen one after another. Writers should not uses these levels recursively.