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WRITING WITH POWER
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WRITING WITH
POWER
Techniques for Mastering
the Writing Process
Second Edition
Peter Elbow
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Copyright © 1981, 1998 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
First published in 1981 by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1981.
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Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data
Elbow, Peter.
Writing with power / Peter Elbow., 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0195120175. — ISBN 0195120183 (pbk.)
1. English language—Rhetoric 2. Report writing.
I. Title.
PE 1408.E39 1998
808'.042'—dc21 9745556
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
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From "South of Pompeii, the Helmsman Balked," by John Balaban, from College English, Vol. 39,
No. 4, December 1977. Copyright © 1977 by the National Council of Teachers of English.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher and the author.
"Psalm 81" from Uncommon Prayers: A Book of Psalms, by Daniel Berrigan. Copyright © 1978 by
Seabury Press, Inc. Used by permission of the Seabury Press, Inc.
From "The Lowboy," by John Cheever. Reprinted from The Stones of John Cheever, copyright ©
1978, by John Cheever and renewed 1978 by John Cheever, by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
From Falconer, by John Cheever. Copyright © 1975, 1977 by John Cheever. Reprinted by permis
sion of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
From the Preface to "A Way Out," by Robert Frost. From Selected Prose of Robert Frost, edited by
Hyde Cox and Edward Connerey Lathan, copyright © 1966 by Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
From "Benjamin Franklin" in Studies in Classic American Literature by D. H. Lawrence.
Copyright 1923 by Thomas Seltzer, Inc., copyright © renewed 1950 by Frieda Lawrence. Reprinted
by permission of Viking Penguin, Inc. Laurence Pollinger Ltd. and the Estate of the late Mrs.
Frieda Lawrence Ravagli.
From Gideon's Trumpet, by Anthony Lewis. Copyright © 1964 by Anthony Lewis. Reprinted by
permission of Random House, Inc.
From Surprised by Joy, by C. S. Lewis. Copyright © 1955 by C. S. Lewis. Reprinted by permission
of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. and Curtis Brown Ltd. on behalf of the Estate of C. S. Lewis.
From Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought, by Peter Medawar. Reprinted from Memoirs
75 by permission of the American Philosophical Society.
From "Poetry and Grammar," from Lectures in America, by Gertrude Stein. Copyright © 1935 by
Modern Library, Inc. First published in 1935 by Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of
Random House, Inc.
From Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf. Copyright © 1925 by Harcourt Brace and World, Inc., and
copyright © 1953 by Leonard Woolf. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.,
the Literary Estate of Virginia Woolf and The Hogarth Press Ltd.
From To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf. Copyright © 1927 by Harcourt Brace and World, Inc.;
renewed 1955 by Leonard Woolf, Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., the
Literary Estate of Virginia Woolf and The Hogarth Press Ltd.
From "To Be Carved on a Tower at Thoore Ballylee," by William Butler Yeats. From Collected
Poems by William Butler Yeats. Copyright 1924 by Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1952 by Bertha
Georgie Yeats. Reprinted by permission of Macmillant Publishing Co., Inc., M. B. Yeats, Anne
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I dedicate this book
to Cami
with my love
NOTE TO THE READER
Writing with power means getting power over words and readers;
writing clearly and correctly; writing what is true or real or interest
ing; and writing persuasively or making some kind of contact with
your readers so that they actually experience your meaning or vision.
In this book I am trying to help you write in all these ways.
But writing with power also means getting power over yourself and
over the writing process; knowing what you are doing as you write;
being in charge; having control; not feeling stuck or helpless or intim
idated. I am particularly interested in this second kind of power in
writing and I have found that without it you seldom achieve the first
kind.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the long process of writing this book, I have learned much about
writing from many people: fellow teachers, fellow thinkers about
writing, readers, students, and kin. I am grateful to the following peo
ple for what a writer often needs, honest helpful reactions to parts of
the manuscript at various stages: Gloria Campbell, Thad Curtz, Joy
and Don Dybeck, Anne Enquist, Lee Graham, Gerald Grant, Burt
Hatlen, Susan Hubbuch, Criseyde Jones, Cecile Kalkwarf, Ellen
Nold, Margaret Proctor, Eugene Smith, Joanne Turpin, Mary Wake
man, and Bernice Youtz.
I hope that the students I have worked with over these last years
here at The Evergreen State College, and the teachers here and else
where, know how much I have learned from them and will accept my
thanks. I am grateful to the students whose writing I quote here for
their permission to do so.
I did some of my final revising during a trip, and due to the kind
hospitality of the following people I found myself working in a succes
sion of particularly gracious rooms, each with a lovely prospect: Jean
and Joan Cordier, Rex and Celia Frayling, Malcolm and Gay Harper,
Helena Knapp.
Deep thanks to my editor at Oxford, John Wright, who helped sus
tain me in countless ways through many unmet deadlines. Also to
Curtis Church, copy editor. I was fortunate to have Janis Maddox as
typist.
My greatest debt in writing this book is to my wife Cami for the
love and support that made it possible and the incisive editorial com
ment that made it better.
P.E.
Olympia, Washington
September 1980
Contents
Introduction to the Second Edition, xiii
I. SOME ESSENTIALS, 3
Introduction: A Map of the Book, 3
1. An Approach to Writing, 6
2. Freewriting, 13
3. Sharing, 20
4. The Direct Writing Process
for Getting Words on Paper, 26
5. Quick Revising, 32
6. The Dangerous Method: Trying To Write It
Right the First Time, 39
II. MORE WAYS OF GETTING WORDS
ON PAPER, 47
Introduction, 47
7. The Openended Writing Process, 50
8. The Loop Writing Process, 59
9. Metaphors for Priming the Pump, 78
10. Working on Writing While Not Thinking
about Writing, 94
11. Poetry as No Big Deal, 101
III. MORE WAYS TO REVISE, 121
Introduction, 121
12. Thorough Revising, 128
Contents xi
13. Revising with Feedback, 139
14. CutandPaste Revising and the Collage, 146
15. The Last Step: Getting Rid of Mistakes in
Grammar, 167
16. Nausea, 173
IV. AUDIENCE, 177
Introduction, 177
17. Other People, 181
18. Audience as Focusing Force, 191
19. Three Tricky Relationships to an Audience, 199
20. Writing for Teachers, 216
V. FEEDBACK, 237
Introduction, 237
21. CriterionBased Feedback and
ReaderBased Feedback, 240
22. A Catalogue of CriterionBased Questions, 252
23. A Catalogue of ReaderBased Questions, 255
24. Options for Getting Feedback, 264
VI. POWER IN WRITING, 279
Introduction, 279
25. Writing and Voice, 281
26. How To Get Power through Voice, 304
27. Breathing Experience into Words, 314
28. Breathing Experience into Expository Writing, 339
29. Writing and Magic, 357
A Select Annotated Bibliography on Publishing
prepared by J. C. Armbruster, 375
Index, 379
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Introduction to the Second Edition
When I wrote the first edition this book, I wanted to cram a lot into
it. Cookbook became my metaphor: a collection of everything I could
think of that was useful and tasty—and set out in selfcontained chap
ters that readers could use in any sequence they want. But now, look
ing back, I see certain coherences I didn't see then.
I see first what commentators also noticed most: my socalled
"romantic" approach, that is, my emphasis on freewriting, chaos, not
planning, mystery, magic, and the intangible. I am still singing this
tune. "Just write, trust, don't ask too many questions, go with it. Put
your effort into experiencing the tree you want to describe, not on
thinking about which words to use. Don't put your attention on qual
ity or critics. Just write." This is the je ne sais quoi dimension of writ
ing. I always want to talk about what cannot quite be analyzed: the
sense of voice in writing, the sense of a writer's presence on the page,
the quality that makes a reader actually see or experience what you
are saying. That is why I use so much indirection and metaphor.
In fact, in the last chapter, I try looking at writing as though it were
magic—to see what that lens brings into focus:
I seem to talk, in short, as though what's important is not the set of
words on the page—the only thing that the reader ever encounters—but
rather something not on the page, something thxe reader never encoun
ters, namely the writers mental/spirituaVcharacterological condition or
the way she wrote down the words. A given set of words can be powerful
or weak, can "take" or not take, as with a potion, according to whether
* The Works Cited for this Introduction will be found on page xiii, not combined with
the original Works Cited that occurs at the back of the book.
xiv Introduction
the writer did the right dance or performed correctly some other purifi
cation ceremony before writing them down.
Could I really believe something this irrational? Surely not.
I guess. (357)
At one point I speak of voice in writing as "juice," saying that the
metaphor is useful because it "combines the qualities of magic potion,
mother's milk, and electricity" (286). This approach to voice brought
on considerable criticism from colleagues in higher education:
Indeed, to believe in "voice," we have to believe that texts contain voices
that somehow get activated by eye contact, or contain something like
pixie dust that creates voices in our heads or bodies when we read.
The problem, of course, is that writing is an intellectual endeavor and
the more students are exhorted to pursue spiritual goals of zeal, "elec
tricity" and personal salvation, the more "voice" appears to be short
sighted and inappropriate. (Hashimoto 801)
But I continue to find this mysterious agenda helpful for my own
writing and for my teaching. Let me explore three examples in a bit
more detail.
(1) Wrongness and felt sense. Once after I led a series of work
shops here at the University of Massachusetts, a faculty participant
told me sheepishly that some of them had taken to calling me "Write
ItWrong Elbow." He feared I might be insulted but I wasn't. Let rne
explore some riches in wrongness.
I start with a germ story of what I learned about giving reactions
and feedback to people s writing. I have often found myself saying
something like, 'Tour essay felt to me kind o f . . . "—and then break
ing off because I couldn't find the word. But in fact I usually had
found a word. A writer who knew my voice and way of speaking might
even "hear" the word my lips were forming to say: "Your essay felt to
me kind of cccch[ildish] . ..." I stopped not just because I didn't want
to insult or annoy the writer, but because I knew that "childish" was
the wrong word. The essay wasn't childish. Yet my reading and expe
riencing of the essay brought the word "childish" to my tongue. After
I stopped, I would usually fish around for the right word—and usually
not find it. Then I would try to explain what I was trying to get at, but
my words would become roundabout and vague. The writer couldn't
tell what I was getting at, and—here's the central fact—7 didn't know
what I was trying to get at.
introduction xv
I eventually learned an easy solution to this feedback problem, but
it only works well if the parties like and trust each other: just blurt
out the wrong word, "childish." For I can usually figure out and
express the perception or reaction I am trying to convey if the writer
gives me an explicit invitation to say the words that come to mind—
even if they are wrong; and then see what other words and thoughts
come along. The writer can even invite me to exaggerate or allow par
ody or distortion.
I don't even have to say, "Your essay was childish." I can say, "I was
going to say Tour essay was childish,' but that's not really right. It's
not really childish. But somehow that's the word that came to mind. I
wonder what I mean." And then pause quietly and look inside and
wait for more words. More often than not, more accurate words arise.
They might be something like, "Yes, your essay isn't childish, but I
feel a kind of stubborn or even obsessive quality in it, even though on
the surface it seems very clear and reasonable. I feel a refusingto
budge quality that reminds me of a stubborn child." Till this point, I
hadn't really known what I was trying to get at—what my perception
or reaction to the writing actually was. But having said this, I realize,
yes, this is what I was noticing and wanting to say. I needed to say the
wrong words to get to the right words. (Of course it might take a cou
ple ol stages to get to this point.)
I've been describing a narrow example of feedback, though a perti
nent one in a book about writing. But I am using it to introduce a
wider meditation on wrongness in language. What is it that goes awry
when we hold back or push away a wrong word because we know it's
wrong—and then stumble around unable to find a better one, end up
being mushy and unclear, and finally lose track of what we were trying
to get at? And what is it that goes right when someone encourages us
to use that wrong word and we finally get to what we are trying to say?
The key event is this: in pushing away the wrong word we lose
track of the feeling of what we were trying to get at, the feeling that
somehow gave rise to that wrong word "childish"—the felt meaning,
the felt sense. The word "childish" may have been wrong, but it hap
pened to be the only word I had with a string on it leading back to the
important thing: my actual reaction to the essay, the insight itself I
wanted to express. If I push that word away because it's wrong, I lose
my tenuous hold on that delicate string, and hence tend to lose the
felt reaction and meaning that I started with.
The larger theme here is mystery in language but, to me at least,
xvi Introduction
this story is finally clear. And for this clarity, I am indebted to an im
portant phenomenological philosopher, Eugene Gendlin. "Felt sense"
is the useful term that he coined. What I and others have learned
from him is how to make more room for felt sense. As Gendlin points
out, people often experience meaning at a nonverbal and even
inchoate level. But he lays out a process that is remarkably helpful in
finding words for what we sense but cannot yet express:
• Accept the words that just arrive in the mind and mouth.
Welcome them.
• But then pause and be comfortable about noticing if they are
wrong or don't fit what we feel or intend. Ask, "Do these words
get at what I'm aiming for?" That is, don't ignore or blot out the
sense of wrongness and just blunder onwards out of a feeling of,
"Oh well, I'm just not a verbal, articulate kind of person."
• Pause and pay attention not just to the wrongness or gap but to
the felt sense or felt meaning or intention behind the wrong
words. Try to listen to the felt sense—or, more precisely, try to
feel it, even in the body.
• From this attending or feeling for felt sense, invite new words to
come.
It's important to recognize that this process (putting out words,
noticing the gap, pausing to attend to felt sense, putting out more
words) often needs to go on more than once. Often we don't find the
"right" words on the first go around. But if we continue with the
process—listening for a wrongness or gap behind the new set of
words—we often finally find the words that click, that express exactly
what we felt. What a miracle to find words for exactly what we
wanted to say. The real miracle is that they are not so hard to find.
But attitude is crucial here. It's no good noticing that one's words
are wrong if the feeling is just, "Oh damn! Wrong words again. Why
can't I ever think of the right words?" We need the more hopeful atti
tude that we get from understanding how the process works: "Of
course the words are wrong. That's how it goes with words. But the
sense of wrongness is leverage for finding better words, if I pause and
look to felt sense. Noticing wrongness is a cause for hope, not dis
couragement." (See Gendlin and Perl for more on felt sense.)
I love the light that Gendlin's insight throws on two common but
different forms of inarticulateness: too few words and too many
words. Both stem from fear of wrongness. That is, some people come
to have too few words because they feel the sense of wrongness so
introduction xvii
strongly. They push away all these wrong words and often end up
with very little they can say. Its easy to see how this can happen.
But in a roundabout way, fear of wrongness can also lead to too
many words. That is, some students who have had their words cor
rected over and over again come to lose all trust in their felt sense:
"Why listen to my felt sense if it's just going to lead to what's wrong?"
So gradually they learn not to feel any sense of wrongness. As a result,
they no longer judge the words they speak or write in terms of any
inner felt meaning—only in terms of outer standards: their under
standing of how language is supposed to go and what they think
teachers and others are looking for.
Some of these people who no longer feel the wrongness or felt
sense produce language that is wildly off base and incoherent, and
thus appear to be deeply stupid or operating according to some alien
mental gear. But the same deafness to felt sense can lead other peo
ple to what looks like successful performance with words: they have
learned to spin out skilled and intelligent words and syntax—but the
words and syntax are generated only by the rules for words and syn
tax, not by connection with felt meaning. Sometimes it's hard to
notice the ungrounded quality to the words—especially if the verbal
skill is indeed impressive.*
'There's actually a third kind of inarticulateness that I want to describe, but I have to admit a
blatant selfinterest. For this is a disability that I suffer from, but I want to redefine it as a
good thing! My problem is that I cannot seem to speak in complete sentences or even with
coherent syntax. My speech is usually a jumble. And I often speak words that are different
from the meaning I intend (for example, saying "after" instead of "before," or "wife" for "hus
band"). But my reflections on the role of felt sense have led me to see my problem in a more
generous light. Let me explain.
When people speak or write, they are drawing on two different inner sources: words and
nonverbal felt sense. Different situations may tend to lead us to call on one source more than
we call on the other. For example, if we are saying something we've already talked about a
lot—or heard about and read about—we have lots of readymade words and phrases sitting
there in our heads to use. But if we are trying to say something we've never said before or
never figured out, something as yet unformulated in our minds, we have greater need to
draw on felt sense.
But some people may tend to favor one source more than the other when they speak and
write. I think I'm one of that breed of people at one end of the spectrum—people who
attend inside more to felt sense than to words—who often try to speak or write from nonver
bal felt sense. Thus all my syntactic confusion and semantic slips.
This has indeed been a problem for me. I tend to sound like an incoherent bumbler in
speaking situations, and I had to quit graduate school because I couldn't write my papers: I
couldn't get my thoughts straight. But once I learned to handle my disability—to trust my
incoherence and wrong words and build patiently from them—I finally learned an amazing
and no so common skill. If I work at it and take my time, I can almost always find the right
words for exactly what I feel and mean. Click. This is easiest for rne in writing, but I can do it
xviii Introduction
Obviously it is important to make room for felt sense in the writing
process. The germ event in writing—perhaps in thinking itself—is
being able to make the move between a piece of nonverbal felt mean
ing and a piece of language. And so we see why freewriting is so
important. Freewriting is the act of respecting and putting down the
words that come to mind and then continuing to respect and put
down the next words that come to mind. This is why freewriting so
often seems repetitive and even obsessive. When we write what
comes to mind, we honor the next mental event, which is often, "No,
that's not quite it." Whether or not we are quick enough to write
down those words, we usually write the new words that are produced
by the feeling of dissatisfaction. And then often a third and even a
fourth way of trying to say what we are trying to get at. Thus freewrit
ing is a particularly apt tool for building bridges between language
and felt sense. But 1 should add that Gendlin's insight about honoring
felt sense has led me to adjust the way I invite students to freewrite.
Instead of just saying, "Please try to write without stopping," I now
say, "Try to write without stopping, but that doesn't mean rushing—
and in fact you may find it helpful to pause now and then to try to feel
inside for what you are getting at."
(2) Quality and bad writing. Let me explore another example of
my mysterious or romantic approach to writing. My invitation to bad
writing. If I say, "Freewrite without struggle," I am inviting careless
ness. If I say, "Don't worry about quality," I am inviting garbage.
Nowadays it seems as though everyone is obsessed with standards and
assessment, so my approach seems more problematic than ever—
more needful of defense.
My defense is to insist that I am after real quality: writing that peo
ple actually want to read by choice. Much "excellent" school and col
lege writing that is given good grades, even by tough teachers, is
writing one has to be paid to read.
in speech too, if the conditions are safe and I take ray time. The words may not be right for
readers or right for the rules of language, but they actually say what I want to say. No small
blessing. So many people have the sadness of not having expressed exactly what it's important
for them to say. So now I conclude that my habitual focus on felt sense is an advantage,
despite the verbal incoherence it often leads to.
Am I saying that all incoherence is a good thing? My argument does not logical! entail that
conclusion. Yet it tickles me to entertain the thought. For of course I have to acknowledge
that my argument comes from someone who has always felt resentment of those who are ver
bally fluent and clear.
introduction
xix
But how can I invite carelessness and garbage and still say I care
about real quality or excellence? My point is this: if you care about
quality you have to choose between two quite different paths: the
path of going for genuinely high quality or the path of fighting bad
ness, carelessness, and garbage. It would seem as though the two
goals would go hand in hand: we fight badness in order to get to
excellence. But I insist that we can't pursue both goals or paths—at
least not at the same time. Let me try to spell out the conflict
between fighting badness and pursuing excellence.
Fighting badness doesn't lead to excellence. Think about what
happens to people whose caring about quality takes the form of fight
ing badness. As they write, they find themselves putting down words
and sentences that are bad: unclear, clunky, corny, and even wrong.
They notice the badness and stop and try to change or improve
things. Or they notice the badness before they put the words on
paper. Either way, the core mental event in their caring about quality
is noticing badness. This process stops some people from writing at all
and limits many others to the writing they cannot avoid. "If this is the
junk that comes to my mind, clearly I'm not cut out to be a writer."
Many teachers have a commitment to quality that takes the form
of always pushing away bad writing. If teachers work hard at this
goal—and manage not to discourage or alienate their students—they
can succeed. But think of the price. Their students end up writing in
a state of constant vigilance. We are often told to drive defensively:
assume that there's a driver you don't notice who is careless or drunk
and may kill you. Good advice for driving, but not for writing. Too
many students write as though every sentence they write might be
criticized for a fault they didn't notice. Defensive writing means not
risking: not risking complicated thoughts or language, not risking
halfunderstood ideas, not risking language that has the resonance
that comes from being close to the bone. Students can get rid of bad
ness if they avoid these risks, but they don't have much chance of true
excellence unless they take them. Getting rid of badness doesn't lead
to excellence.
I want to push my argument further. It's not just that the fight
against badness doesn't get us to excellence. I'd go further and insist
that if we really want to encourage excellence, we need to invite bad
ness. Think about the central question here: how do we encourage
excellence? There is no sure fire method, but one thing is clear: we
have little hope of producing excellent writing unless we write a great
xx Introduction
deal. Plenty will be bad. If we want lots of practice and experience,
we can't limit our writing to times when our mind is operating well,
Nor can we write a lot unless we get some pleasure from it, and plea
sure is unavailable if we wince at everything bad that comes out and
stop and try to fix it. If we write enough, we have at least a chance of
producing some excellent bits.
I have sympathy for people who choose the first goal of fighting
badness. It is more feasible. We pretty much know what badness is
and we can pretty much agree when we see it. And we know how to
get rid of it: delete. We don't know any proven paths to excellence—
indeed we often have more trouble agreeing about what excellence is,
or whether some piece is excellent or not. What I don't have sympa
thy for, however, is the confusion of these two goals: professing that
one is seeking excellence but actually spending all one's energy just
fighting badness, carelessness, and poor writing.
Perhaps we'll eventually learn to analyze perfectly what leads to
the excellence that makes readers want to read—and how to produce
it. For now I simply note a striking and hopeful fact: often I see more
passages that capture me and draw me on in pieces of freewriting
where students abandoned care and invited garbage, than I see in
writing born of planning and vigilance where they tried to meet stan
dards. The qualities I am thinking about are things like life, energy,
independence—and even rambunctiousness and rebellion. Also qual
ities like voice and (the words are anathema among academics) real
ness, authenticity, the nonfake. To achieve qualities like these, we
have to welcome badness.
Of course there is an obvious objection to my approach: Why con
fuse yourself and others by trying to focus on the mystery of genuine
excellence—what is unteachable, really—when getting rid of badness
is eminently feasible? When students get rid of badness, they may not
have attained the je ne sals quoi, but at least they'll have something
solid. From there they have a better shot at the mystery of excellence.
This is a sensible point of view, but I persist in believing my approach
is more hopeful.
First, even though it's hard to name and analyze real excellence
and the more mysterious qualities of voice, life, juice, and the non
fake, they are nevertheless not so hard to attain, at least in snatches.
And quickly—even by people who are unskilled. I still stand by a kind
of manifesto I wrote earlier:
introduction
xxi
Even though it may take some people a long time before they can write
well about certain complicated topics or write in certain formal styles,
and even though it will take some people a long time before they can
write without mistakes in spelling and usage, nevertheless, nothing stops
anyone from writing words that will make readers listen and be affected.
Nothing stops you from writing right now, today, words that people will
want to read
(304)
Second, once people have the feel of producing some words that
were a pleasure to write and that make a dent on readers, they do
better at putting in the enormous work needed to produce more of
them. For really, the central question in writing (as with any difficult
skill) is this: How can I get myself to put in the daunting time and
effort I need for more consistent good results? The answer, I think, is
to cheat—to look for pleasure and shortcuts. Must I master scales
before I get to play pieces? Mastering scales can take forever, espe
cially since the task is so unrewarding. Playing pieces when I am "not
ready" will of course lead to mistakes, but it will also bring out some
good results and some musical skills that I cannot find if I just try to
master scales. And it will give me motivation and energy to do some
work on scales.
(3) Sharing writing. The more I teach and write, the more I value
what could be called a third mysterious dimension of my book, the
minimal but powerful process of mere sharing. People simply read
their pieces to each other, listeners respond with nothing but "thank
you" and a few "pointings" to words or sections that came through
strongly. Perhaps, in addition, the group has a bit of discussion of the
topic itself or the experience of writing. But there is no effort to get
readers to describe their reactions to the writing, or to note strengths
and weaknesses, or to give helpful suggestions for improvement.
When we read our words to others, we learn about our writing
with enormous efficiency simply by feeling the shapes of our words
and sentences in our mouths and hearing them in our ears. (Many
people don't hear their sentences as they construct them on paper.)
And we don't just hear our words better, we internalize the sense of
ourself as another reader. We learn to hear with other ears. This helps
our words move on to the next stage. And yet all this goes on so
quickly and easily. The feedback process can misfire in many ways
(for instance when we get responses that confuse us or intimidate us),
xxii Introduction
but mere sharing can't go wrong. People are often nervous at first
about reading out loud, and nervous again about not getting feed
back, but soon the process itself of giving and receiving becomes
sociable, easy, and pleasurable. It's all learning, no teaching.
By the way, when I praise mere sharing, I'm not just trying to find a
sneaky way to devalue feedback from amateurs as compared to feed
back from teachers. Feedback from teachers goes wrong as often as
feedback from amateurs. Besides, amateurs are often less dogmatic. I
sometimes think I help my students best in short conferences where I
just listen to them read and ask them to talk about what they notice.
I've explored in some detail three examples of the mysterious
dimension of Writing With Power: wrongness and felt sense, quality
and bad writing, mere sharing. In these and other realms, I'm still a
cheerleader for the mysterious, the roundabout, the tacit. I'm still
guilty of what has been called "romanticism." But while this dimen
sion of the book is perhaps the most obvious one, I'm more struck
now, as I look back, by a different and less noticed rational dimension:
my hunger to analyze and control the mystery. It was this that led me
to my subtitle: "techniques for mastering the writing process."
If the dimension I described above shows me as a longhaired
nineteenthcentury romantic, this one shows me as an eighteenth
century classicist—or a shorthaired twentiethcentury technician of
the writing process with a slide rule on my belt. (My first teaching
experience was at M.I.T. in the days of short hair and slide rules.)
I've always raised my eyebrows at what feels like the hyperratio
nality in Linda Flowers work. She stresses repeatedly that we should
always start by planning and setting goals. She's whistling the opposite
tune to my "Just write off into the blue and see where you get, the
hell with planning." And yet really, I am just as guilty of rationality—
indeed of lusting after a shrewder rationality—by thinking that we
can plan with better vision. I'm arguing that we can make a better
plan if we plan for nonplanning; we can write better if we build in
periods where we remove goals from our mind; we can meet the
needs of readers better if we sometimes put readers out of mind—
especially at early stages.
The romantic dimension of my book tricked people into thinking
that I'm just peddling mystery: the Zen of writing, bad is good. But
really I'm saying that we can consciously take hold of ourselves and,
introduction
xxiii
in a real sense, control our productive process. If we think carefully
and practice, we can learn to resist certain habits, we can set aside
certain times for nonplanning and freewriting, and thereby find a
rational path for writing—even though it may not look rational com
pared to conventional notions of rationality and control.
And so I have to confess my longstanding hunger for a more
sophisticated technology or larger rationality. What has always driven
me in my writing about writing is an impulse for analysis—for under
standing and controlling the mysteries that often baffle or block us
when we try to write. But to be as deeply rational as I want to be, I
have learned to give hostages to irrationality, noncontrol, garbage, and
chaos. I conclude that we can try to plan or choose times for this
dimension, but we can also plan to recognize that sometimes it will
knock on our door when we are not expecting it—and we can decide
that stopping what we are doing and going with the unexpected is
part of our plan.
In my hunger for control perhaps I risk hubris or oversimplifica
tion. I've taken hits for this too. I remember sending an article to the
leading journal for composition studies and getting back a rejection
based on a reviewer writing: "Hasn't this writer ever heard what
everyone knows?—that writing is a recursive process?" (I quote
loosely from memory, but the reviewer didn't mince words).
"Recursive" had come to be one of the canonical buzzwords in the
profession, and this reviewer was talking about the recent, extensive
research showing how often both skilled and unskilled writers circle
around and move back and forth, again and again, among contrasting
activities like planning, writing down some words, thinking about crit
icisms, pondering, putting down more words, changing the words,
writing more words, thinking about plans, rearranging the words and
so on. Because I emphasized the need to separate the generating
process from the revising process, I appeared to this reviewer like a
troglodyte who was trying to resurrect the old fashioned, rigid dis
credited talk about "set stages in the composing process."
I'm not arguing that we should be so rigidly unrecursive as to com
plete all our generating before we do any revising—and then engage
in nothing but revising and permit no generating. My emphasis is not
so much on restricting ourselves to two stages but on trying to culti
vate and heighten two mentalities—perhaps going back and forth
occasionally between them. We can have some recursiveness and still
emphasize differentiation of mentalities.
xxiv Introduction
But in the end I'm fairly guilty: I am pushing against recursiveness.
For over my years of writing and teaching, I have grown more confi
dent in my belief that it helps to try for as much generating as possi
ble at the start of a writing project, and push away negative criticism
till later. That is, we benefit from making a conscious effort to block
all those behaviors that we so naturally engage in while we are trying
to write a draft:
• sitting there trying to figure out our main point or trying to hone
a careful "thesis statement";
• carefully revising and polishing a paragraph before moving on
—especially the first introductory paragraph (when we haven't
yet written the body of the piece that this introduction will have
to introduce);
• trying to decide on the right word (instead putting down the three
wrong ones that come to mind and seeing where they lead);
• looking up corrections for spelling and rules for grammar (in
stead of settling for temporary approximations);
• working hard to make the outline just right;
• pondering the order of paragraphs or sections—often rearrang
ing things;
• sitting there thinking about criticisms that someone might make;
• reading over a phrase or sentence or paragraph again and again
—changing and rechanging the wording to make it more pre
cise, more graceful, more intelligent, less clunky;
• carefully planning fonts, pitch sizes, margins, and other matters
of format and document design.
These are premature revising behaviors. Every one of them is just
right for revising, but they get in our way if we use them while still
writing an early draft—while we are trying to generate as many words
and thoughts as possible. Premature revising is counterproductive in
various ways. When we put ourselves in a correcting, faultfinding
frame of mind, we usually have more trouble coming up with new
and interesting ideas. We see faults in ideas before we've had a
chance to work them out, and we get distracted in our thinking by all
the fixing and correcting at the surface level. Besides, premature
revising usually gets us to spend time fixing or correcting things that
we later throw away. Or worse yet, we don't throw away something we
ought to throw away, because we've invested so much time and
energy massaging it that we can't bear to let it go.
The first goal, then, is to hold off revising and the revising mental
introduction xxv
ity till we have a great deal of material. But is the matching principle
just as important?—preventing ourselves from generating new ideas
while revising?
On the one hand, of course it's great to welcome new ideas during
revising. The process of seeing faults and moving things around will
almost always lead to new ideas—especially when we notice holes
that need to be filled. That is, it's more important to push away criti
cal thinking during earlier stages than it is to push away new ideas
during later stages. New ideas are always welcome; criticism is not
always welcome.
Yet on the other hand, there is still a value in pushing away the
generative mentality during revising. The point is clearest if we con
sider ari extreme or limiting case: copyediting. If we try to copyedit
and still think about our ideas and our style, we may improve our
ideas and style, but we will definitely sabotage our copyediting. For
it's difficult to see surface mistakes when we are looking through the
surface to what lies beneath. So too with revising in general: revising
can trigger new ideas, but this will muddy and prolong the revising
process. Any good new idea is likely to put a kink in our sequence of
parts or slightly disturb what we thought was our main idea or theme.
We always needs a final stage of uninterrupted revising i
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WRITING WITH
POWER
Techniques for Mastering
the Writing Process
Second Edition
Peter Elbow
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1981, 1998 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
First published in 1981 by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1981.
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the
prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data
Elbow, Peter.
Writing with power / Peter Elbow., 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0195120175. — ISBN 0195120183 (pbk.)
1. English language—Rhetoric 2. Report writing.
I. Title.
PE 1408.E39 1998
808'.042'—dc21 9745556
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Printed in the United States of America
on acid free paper
From "South of Pompeii, the Helmsman Balked," by John Balaban, from College English, Vol. 39,
No. 4, December 1977. Copyright © 1977 by the National Council of Teachers of English.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher and the author.
"Psalm 81" from Uncommon Prayers: A Book of Psalms, by Daniel Berrigan. Copyright © 1978 by
Seabury Press, Inc. Used by permission of the Seabury Press, Inc.
From "The Lowboy," by John Cheever. Reprinted from The Stones of John Cheever, copyright ©
1978, by John Cheever and renewed 1978 by John Cheever, by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
From Falconer, by John Cheever. Copyright © 1975, 1977 by John Cheever. Reprinted by permis
sion of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
From the Preface to "A Way Out," by Robert Frost. From Selected Prose of Robert Frost, edited by
Hyde Cox and Edward Connerey Lathan, copyright © 1966 by Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
From "Benjamin Franklin" in Studies in Classic American Literature by D. H. Lawrence.
Copyright 1923 by Thomas Seltzer, Inc., copyright © renewed 1950 by Frieda Lawrence. Reprinted
by permission of Viking Penguin, Inc. Laurence Pollinger Ltd. and the Estate of the late Mrs.
Frieda Lawrence Ravagli.
From Gideon's Trumpet, by Anthony Lewis. Copyright © 1964 by Anthony Lewis. Reprinted by
permission of Random House, Inc.
From Surprised by Joy, by C. S. Lewis. Copyright © 1955 by C. S. Lewis. Reprinted by permission
of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. and Curtis Brown Ltd. on behalf of the Estate of C. S. Lewis.
From Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought, by Peter Medawar. Reprinted from Memoirs
75 by permission of the American Philosophical Society.
From "Poetry and Grammar," from Lectures in America, by Gertrude Stein. Copyright © 1935 by
Modern Library, Inc. First published in 1935 by Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of
Random House, Inc.
From Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf. Copyright © 1925 by Harcourt Brace and World, Inc., and
copyright © 1953 by Leonard Woolf. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.,
the Literary Estate of Virginia Woolf and The Hogarth Press Ltd.
From To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf. Copyright © 1927 by Harcourt Brace and World, Inc.;
renewed 1955 by Leonard Woolf, Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., the
Literary Estate of Virginia Woolf and The Hogarth Press Ltd.
From "To Be Carved on a Tower at Thoore Ballylee," by William Butler Yeats. From Collected
Poems by William Butler Yeats. Copyright 1924 by Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1952 by Bertha
Georgie Yeats. Reprinted by permission of Macmillant Publishing Co., Inc., M. B. Yeats, Anne
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I dedicate this book
to Cami
with my love
NOTE TO THE READER
Writing with power means getting power over words and readers;
writing clearly and correctly; writing what is true or real or interest
ing; and writing persuasively or making some kind of contact with
your readers so that they actually experience your meaning or vision.
In this book I am trying to help you write in all these ways.
But writing with power also means getting power over yourself and
over the writing process; knowing what you are doing as you write;
being in charge; having control; not feeling stuck or helpless or intim
idated. I am particularly interested in this second kind of power in
writing and I have found that without it you seldom achieve the first
kind.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the long process of writing this book, I have learned much about
writing from many people: fellow teachers, fellow thinkers about
writing, readers, students, and kin. I am grateful to the following peo
ple for what a writer often needs, honest helpful reactions to parts of
the manuscript at various stages: Gloria Campbell, Thad Curtz, Joy
and Don Dybeck, Anne Enquist, Lee Graham, Gerald Grant, Burt
Hatlen, Susan Hubbuch, Criseyde Jones, Cecile Kalkwarf, Ellen
Nold, Margaret Proctor, Eugene Smith, Joanne Turpin, Mary Wake
man, and Bernice Youtz.
I hope that the students I have worked with over these last years
here at The Evergreen State College, and the teachers here and else
where, know how much I have learned from them and will accept my
thanks. I am grateful to the students whose writing I quote here for
their permission to do so.
I did some of my final revising during a trip, and due to the kind
hospitality of the following people I found myself working in a succes
sion of particularly gracious rooms, each with a lovely prospect: Jean
and Joan Cordier, Rex and Celia Frayling, Malcolm and Gay Harper,
Helena Knapp.
Deep thanks to my editor at Oxford, John Wright, who helped sus
tain me in countless ways through many unmet deadlines. Also to
Curtis Church, copy editor. I was fortunate to have Janis Maddox as
typist.
My greatest debt in writing this book is to my wife Cami for the
love and support that made it possible and the incisive editorial com
ment that made it better.
P.E.
Olympia, Washington
September 1980
Contents
Introduction to the Second Edition, xiii
I. SOME ESSENTIALS, 3
Introduction: A Map of the Book, 3
1. An Approach to Writing, 6
2. Freewriting, 13
3. Sharing, 20
4. The Direct Writing Process
for Getting Words on Paper, 26
5. Quick Revising, 32
6. The Dangerous Method: Trying To Write It
Right the First Time, 39
II. MORE WAYS OF GETTING WORDS
ON PAPER, 47
Introduction, 47
7. The Openended Writing Process, 50
8. The Loop Writing Process, 59
9. Metaphors for Priming the Pump, 78
10. Working on Writing While Not Thinking
about Writing, 94
11. Poetry as No Big Deal, 101
III. MORE WAYS TO REVISE, 121
Introduction, 121
12. Thorough Revising, 128
Contents xi
13. Revising with Feedback, 139
14. CutandPaste Revising and the Collage, 146
15. The Last Step: Getting Rid of Mistakes in
Grammar, 167
16. Nausea, 173
IV. AUDIENCE, 177
Introduction, 177
17. Other People, 181
18. Audience as Focusing Force, 191
19. Three Tricky Relationships to an Audience, 199
20. Writing for Teachers, 216
V. FEEDBACK, 237
Introduction, 237
21. CriterionBased Feedback and
ReaderBased Feedback, 240
22. A Catalogue of CriterionBased Questions, 252
23. A Catalogue of ReaderBased Questions, 255
24. Options for Getting Feedback, 264
VI. POWER IN WRITING, 279
Introduction, 279
25. Writing and Voice, 281
26. How To Get Power through Voice, 304
27. Breathing Experience into Words, 314
28. Breathing Experience into Expository Writing, 339
29. Writing and Magic, 357
A Select Annotated Bibliography on Publishing
prepared by J. C. Armbruster, 375
Index, 379
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Introduction to the Second Edition
When I wrote the first edition this book, I wanted to cram a lot into
it. Cookbook became my metaphor: a collection of everything I could
think of that was useful and tasty—and set out in selfcontained chap
ters that readers could use in any sequence they want. But now, look
ing back, I see certain coherences I didn't see then.
I see first what commentators also noticed most: my socalled
"romantic" approach, that is, my emphasis on freewriting, chaos, not
planning, mystery, magic, and the intangible. I am still singing this
tune. "Just write, trust, don't ask too many questions, go with it. Put
your effort into experiencing the tree you want to describe, not on
thinking about which words to use. Don't put your attention on qual
ity or critics. Just write." This is the je ne sais quoi dimension of writ
ing. I always want to talk about what cannot quite be analyzed: the
sense of voice in writing, the sense of a writer's presence on the page,
the quality that makes a reader actually see or experience what you
are saying. That is why I use so much indirection and metaphor.
In fact, in the last chapter, I try looking at writing as though it were
magic—to see what that lens brings into focus:
I seem to talk, in short, as though what's important is not the set of
words on the page—the only thing that the reader ever encounters—but
rather something not on the page, something thxe reader never encoun
ters, namely the writers mental/spirituaVcharacterological condition or
the way she wrote down the words. A given set of words can be powerful
or weak, can "take" or not take, as with a potion, according to whether
* The Works Cited for this Introduction will be found on page xiii, not combined with
the original Works Cited that occurs at the back of the book.
xiv Introduction
the writer did the right dance or performed correctly some other purifi
cation ceremony before writing them down.
Could I really believe something this irrational? Surely not.
I guess. (357)
At one point I speak of voice in writing as "juice," saying that the
metaphor is useful because it "combines the qualities of magic potion,
mother's milk, and electricity" (286). This approach to voice brought
on considerable criticism from colleagues in higher education:
Indeed, to believe in "voice," we have to believe that texts contain voices
that somehow get activated by eye contact, or contain something like
pixie dust that creates voices in our heads or bodies when we read.
The problem, of course, is that writing is an intellectual endeavor and
the more students are exhorted to pursue spiritual goals of zeal, "elec
tricity" and personal salvation, the more "voice" appears to be short
sighted and inappropriate. (Hashimoto 801)
But I continue to find this mysterious agenda helpful for my own
writing and for my teaching. Let me explore three examples in a bit
more detail.
(1) Wrongness and felt sense. Once after I led a series of work
shops here at the University of Massachusetts, a faculty participant
told me sheepishly that some of them had taken to calling me "Write
ItWrong Elbow." He feared I might be insulted but I wasn't. Let rne
explore some riches in wrongness.
I start with a germ story of what I learned about giving reactions
and feedback to people s writing. I have often found myself saying
something like, 'Tour essay felt to me kind o f . . . "—and then break
ing off because I couldn't find the word. But in fact I usually had
found a word. A writer who knew my voice and way of speaking might
even "hear" the word my lips were forming to say: "Your essay felt to
me kind of cccch[ildish] . ..." I stopped not just because I didn't want
to insult or annoy the writer, but because I knew that "childish" was
the wrong word. The essay wasn't childish. Yet my reading and expe
riencing of the essay brought the word "childish" to my tongue. After
I stopped, I would usually fish around for the right word—and usually
not find it. Then I would try to explain what I was trying to get at, but
my words would become roundabout and vague. The writer couldn't
tell what I was getting at, and—here's the central fact—7 didn't know
what I was trying to get at.
introduction xv
I eventually learned an easy solution to this feedback problem, but
it only works well if the parties like and trust each other: just blurt
out the wrong word, "childish." For I can usually figure out and
express the perception or reaction I am trying to convey if the writer
gives me an explicit invitation to say the words that come to mind—
even if they are wrong; and then see what other words and thoughts
come along. The writer can even invite me to exaggerate or allow par
ody or distortion.
I don't even have to say, "Your essay was childish." I can say, "I was
going to say Tour essay was childish,' but that's not really right. It's
not really childish. But somehow that's the word that came to mind. I
wonder what I mean." And then pause quietly and look inside and
wait for more words. More often than not, more accurate words arise.
They might be something like, "Yes, your essay isn't childish, but I
feel a kind of stubborn or even obsessive quality in it, even though on
the surface it seems very clear and reasonable. I feel a refusingto
budge quality that reminds me of a stubborn child." Till this point, I
hadn't really known what I was trying to get at—what my perception
or reaction to the writing actually was. But having said this, I realize,
yes, this is what I was noticing and wanting to say. I needed to say the
wrong words to get to the right words. (Of course it might take a cou
ple ol stages to get to this point.)
I've been describing a narrow example of feedback, though a perti
nent one in a book about writing. But I am using it to introduce a
wider meditation on wrongness in language. What is it that goes awry
when we hold back or push away a wrong word because we know it's
wrong—and then stumble around unable to find a better one, end up
being mushy and unclear, and finally lose track of what we were trying
to get at? And what is it that goes right when someone encourages us
to use that wrong word and we finally get to what we are trying to say?
The key event is this: in pushing away the wrong word we lose
track of the feeling of what we were trying to get at, the feeling that
somehow gave rise to that wrong word "childish"—the felt meaning,
the felt sense. The word "childish" may have been wrong, but it hap
pened to be the only word I had with a string on it leading back to the
important thing: my actual reaction to the essay, the insight itself I
wanted to express. If I push that word away because it's wrong, I lose
my tenuous hold on that delicate string, and hence tend to lose the
felt reaction and meaning that I started with.
The larger theme here is mystery in language but, to me at least,
xvi Introduction
this story is finally clear. And for this clarity, I am indebted to an im
portant phenomenological philosopher, Eugene Gendlin. "Felt sense"
is the useful term that he coined. What I and others have learned
from him is how to make more room for felt sense. As Gendlin points
out, people often experience meaning at a nonverbal and even
inchoate level. But he lays out a process that is remarkably helpful in
finding words for what we sense but cannot yet express:
• Accept the words that just arrive in the mind and mouth.
Welcome them.
• But then pause and be comfortable about noticing if they are
wrong or don't fit what we feel or intend. Ask, "Do these words
get at what I'm aiming for?" That is, don't ignore or blot out the
sense of wrongness and just blunder onwards out of a feeling of,
"Oh well, I'm just not a verbal, articulate kind of person."
• Pause and pay attention not just to the wrongness or gap but to
the felt sense or felt meaning or intention behind the wrong
words. Try to listen to the felt sense—or, more precisely, try to
feel it, even in the body.
• From this attending or feeling for felt sense, invite new words to
come.
It's important to recognize that this process (putting out words,
noticing the gap, pausing to attend to felt sense, putting out more
words) often needs to go on more than once. Often we don't find the
"right" words on the first go around. But if we continue with the
process—listening for a wrongness or gap behind the new set of
words—we often finally find the words that click, that express exactly
what we felt. What a miracle to find words for exactly what we
wanted to say. The real miracle is that they are not so hard to find.
But attitude is crucial here. It's no good noticing that one's words
are wrong if the feeling is just, "Oh damn! Wrong words again. Why
can't I ever think of the right words?" We need the more hopeful atti
tude that we get from understanding how the process works: "Of
course the words are wrong. That's how it goes with words. But the
sense of wrongness is leverage for finding better words, if I pause and
look to felt sense. Noticing wrongness is a cause for hope, not dis
couragement." (See Gendlin and Perl for more on felt sense.)
I love the light that Gendlin's insight throws on two common but
different forms of inarticulateness: too few words and too many
words. Both stem from fear of wrongness. That is, some people come
to have too few words because they feel the sense of wrongness so
introduction xvii
strongly. They push away all these wrong words and often end up
with very little they can say. Its easy to see how this can happen.
But in a roundabout way, fear of wrongness can also lead to too
many words. That is, some students who have had their words cor
rected over and over again come to lose all trust in their felt sense:
"Why listen to my felt sense if it's just going to lead to what's wrong?"
So gradually they learn not to feel any sense of wrongness. As a result,
they no longer judge the words they speak or write in terms of any
inner felt meaning—only in terms of outer standards: their under
standing of how language is supposed to go and what they think
teachers and others are looking for.
Some of these people who no longer feel the wrongness or felt
sense produce language that is wildly off base and incoherent, and
thus appear to be deeply stupid or operating according to some alien
mental gear. But the same deafness to felt sense can lead other peo
ple to what looks like successful performance with words: they have
learned to spin out skilled and intelligent words and syntax—but the
words and syntax are generated only by the rules for words and syn
tax, not by connection with felt meaning. Sometimes it's hard to
notice the ungrounded quality to the words—especially if the verbal
skill is indeed impressive.*
'There's actually a third kind of inarticulateness that I want to describe, but I have to admit a
blatant selfinterest. For this is a disability that I suffer from, but I want to redefine it as a
good thing! My problem is that I cannot seem to speak in complete sentences or even with
coherent syntax. My speech is usually a jumble. And I often speak words that are different
from the meaning I intend (for example, saying "after" instead of "before," or "wife" for "hus
band"). But my reflections on the role of felt sense have led me to see my problem in a more
generous light. Let me explain.
When people speak or write, they are drawing on two different inner sources: words and
nonverbal felt sense. Different situations may tend to lead us to call on one source more than
we call on the other. For example, if we are saying something we've already talked about a
lot—or heard about and read about—we have lots of readymade words and phrases sitting
there in our heads to use. But if we are trying to say something we've never said before or
never figured out, something as yet unformulated in our minds, we have greater need to
draw on felt sense.
But some people may tend to favor one source more than the other when they speak and
write. I think I'm one of that breed of people at one end of the spectrum—people who
attend inside more to felt sense than to words—who often try to speak or write from nonver
bal felt sense. Thus all my syntactic confusion and semantic slips.
This has indeed been a problem for me. I tend to sound like an incoherent bumbler in
speaking situations, and I had to quit graduate school because I couldn't write my papers: I
couldn't get my thoughts straight. But once I learned to handle my disability—to trust my
incoherence and wrong words and build patiently from them—I finally learned an amazing
and no so common skill. If I work at it and take my time, I can almost always find the right
words for exactly what I feel and mean. Click. This is easiest for rne in writing, but I can do it
xviii Introduction
Obviously it is important to make room for felt sense in the writing
process. The germ event in writing—perhaps in thinking itself—is
being able to make the move between a piece of nonverbal felt mean
ing and a piece of language. And so we see why freewriting is so
important. Freewriting is the act of respecting and putting down the
words that come to mind and then continuing to respect and put
down the next words that come to mind. This is why freewriting so
often seems repetitive and even obsessive. When we write what
comes to mind, we honor the next mental event, which is often, "No,
that's not quite it." Whether or not we are quick enough to write
down those words, we usually write the new words that are produced
by the feeling of dissatisfaction. And then often a third and even a
fourth way of trying to say what we are trying to get at. Thus freewrit
ing is a particularly apt tool for building bridges between language
and felt sense. But 1 should add that Gendlin's insight about honoring
felt sense has led me to adjust the way I invite students to freewrite.
Instead of just saying, "Please try to write without stopping," I now
say, "Try to write without stopping, but that doesn't mean rushing—
and in fact you may find it helpful to pause now and then to try to feel
inside for what you are getting at."
(2) Quality and bad writing. Let me explore another example of
my mysterious or romantic approach to writing. My invitation to bad
writing. If I say, "Freewrite without struggle," I am inviting careless
ness. If I say, "Don't worry about quality," I am inviting garbage.
Nowadays it seems as though everyone is obsessed with standards and
assessment, so my approach seems more problematic than ever—
more needful of defense.
My defense is to insist that I am after real quality: writing that peo
ple actually want to read by choice. Much "excellent" school and col
lege writing that is given good grades, even by tough teachers, is
writing one has to be paid to read.
in speech too, if the conditions are safe and I take ray time. The words may not be right for
readers or right for the rules of language, but they actually say what I want to say. No small
blessing. So many people have the sadness of not having expressed exactly what it's important
for them to say. So now I conclude that my habitual focus on felt sense is an advantage,
despite the verbal incoherence it often leads to.
Am I saying that all incoherence is a good thing? My argument does not logical! entail that
conclusion. Yet it tickles me to entertain the thought. For of course I have to acknowledge
that my argument comes from someone who has always felt resentment of those who are ver
bally fluent and clear.
introduction
xix
But how can I invite carelessness and garbage and still say I care
about real quality or excellence? My point is this: if you care about
quality you have to choose between two quite different paths: the
path of going for genuinely high quality or the path of fighting bad
ness, carelessness, and garbage. It would seem as though the two
goals would go hand in hand: we fight badness in order to get to
excellence. But I insist that we can't pursue both goals or paths—at
least not at the same time. Let me try to spell out the conflict
between fighting badness and pursuing excellence.
Fighting badness doesn't lead to excellence. Think about what
happens to people whose caring about quality takes the form of fight
ing badness. As they write, they find themselves putting down words
and sentences that are bad: unclear, clunky, corny, and even wrong.
They notice the badness and stop and try to change or improve
things. Or they notice the badness before they put the words on
paper. Either way, the core mental event in their caring about quality
is noticing badness. This process stops some people from writing at all
and limits many others to the writing they cannot avoid. "If this is the
junk that comes to my mind, clearly I'm not cut out to be a writer."
Many teachers have a commitment to quality that takes the form
of always pushing away bad writing. If teachers work hard at this
goal—and manage not to discourage or alienate their students—they
can succeed. But think of the price. Their students end up writing in
a state of constant vigilance. We are often told to drive defensively:
assume that there's a driver you don't notice who is careless or drunk
and may kill you. Good advice for driving, but not for writing. Too
many students write as though every sentence they write might be
criticized for a fault they didn't notice. Defensive writing means not
risking: not risking complicated thoughts or language, not risking
halfunderstood ideas, not risking language that has the resonance
that comes from being close to the bone. Students can get rid of bad
ness if they avoid these risks, but they don't have much chance of true
excellence unless they take them. Getting rid of badness doesn't lead
to excellence.
I want to push my argument further. It's not just that the fight
against badness doesn't get us to excellence. I'd go further and insist
that if we really want to encourage excellence, we need to invite bad
ness. Think about the central question here: how do we encourage
excellence? There is no sure fire method, but one thing is clear: we
have little hope of producing excellent writing unless we write a great
xx Introduction
deal. Plenty will be bad. If we want lots of practice and experience,
we can't limit our writing to times when our mind is operating well,
Nor can we write a lot unless we get some pleasure from it, and plea
sure is unavailable if we wince at everything bad that comes out and
stop and try to fix it. If we write enough, we have at least a chance of
producing some excellent bits.
I have sympathy for people who choose the first goal of fighting
badness. It is more feasible. We pretty much know what badness is
and we can pretty much agree when we see it. And we know how to
get rid of it: delete. We don't know any proven paths to excellence—
indeed we often have more trouble agreeing about what excellence is,
or whether some piece is excellent or not. What I don't have sympa
thy for, however, is the confusion of these two goals: professing that
one is seeking excellence but actually spending all one's energy just
fighting badness, carelessness, and poor writing.
Perhaps we'll eventually learn to analyze perfectly what leads to
the excellence that makes readers want to read—and how to produce
it. For now I simply note a striking and hopeful fact: often I see more
passages that capture me and draw me on in pieces of freewriting
where students abandoned care and invited garbage, than I see in
writing born of planning and vigilance where they tried to meet stan
dards. The qualities I am thinking about are things like life, energy,
independence—and even rambunctiousness and rebellion. Also qual
ities like voice and (the words are anathema among academics) real
ness, authenticity, the nonfake. To achieve qualities like these, we
have to welcome badness.
Of course there is an obvious objection to my approach: Why con
fuse yourself and others by trying to focus on the mystery of genuine
excellence—what is unteachable, really—when getting rid of badness
is eminently feasible? When students get rid of badness, they may not
have attained the je ne sals quoi, but at least they'll have something
solid. From there they have a better shot at the mystery of excellence.
This is a sensible point of view, but I persist in believing my approach
is more hopeful.
First, even though it's hard to name and analyze real excellence
and the more mysterious qualities of voice, life, juice, and the non
fake, they are nevertheless not so hard to attain, at least in snatches.
And quickly—even by people who are unskilled. I still stand by a kind
of manifesto I wrote earlier:
introduction
xxi
Even though it may take some people a long time before they can write
well about certain complicated topics or write in certain formal styles,
and even though it will take some people a long time before they can
write without mistakes in spelling and usage, nevertheless, nothing stops
anyone from writing words that will make readers listen and be affected.
Nothing stops you from writing right now, today, words that people will
want to read
(304)
Second, once people have the feel of producing some words that
were a pleasure to write and that make a dent on readers, they do
better at putting in the enormous work needed to produce more of
them. For really, the central question in writing (as with any difficult
skill) is this: How can I get myself to put in the daunting time and
effort I need for more consistent good results? The answer, I think, is
to cheat—to look for pleasure and shortcuts. Must I master scales
before I get to play pieces? Mastering scales can take forever, espe
cially since the task is so unrewarding. Playing pieces when I am "not
ready" will of course lead to mistakes, but it will also bring out some
good results and some musical skills that I cannot find if I just try to
master scales. And it will give me motivation and energy to do some
work on scales.
(3) Sharing writing. The more I teach and write, the more I value
what could be called a third mysterious dimension of my book, the
minimal but powerful process of mere sharing. People simply read
their pieces to each other, listeners respond with nothing but "thank
you" and a few "pointings" to words or sections that came through
strongly. Perhaps, in addition, the group has a bit of discussion of the
topic itself or the experience of writing. But there is no effort to get
readers to describe their reactions to the writing, or to note strengths
and weaknesses, or to give helpful suggestions for improvement.
When we read our words to others, we learn about our writing
with enormous efficiency simply by feeling the shapes of our words
and sentences in our mouths and hearing them in our ears. (Many
people don't hear their sentences as they construct them on paper.)
And we don't just hear our words better, we internalize the sense of
ourself as another reader. We learn to hear with other ears. This helps
our words move on to the next stage. And yet all this goes on so
quickly and easily. The feedback process can misfire in many ways
(for instance when we get responses that confuse us or intimidate us),
xxii Introduction
but mere sharing can't go wrong. People are often nervous at first
about reading out loud, and nervous again about not getting feed
back, but soon the process itself of giving and receiving becomes
sociable, easy, and pleasurable. It's all learning, no teaching.
By the way, when I praise mere sharing, I'm not just trying to find a
sneaky way to devalue feedback from amateurs as compared to feed
back from teachers. Feedback from teachers goes wrong as often as
feedback from amateurs. Besides, amateurs are often less dogmatic. I
sometimes think I help my students best in short conferences where I
just listen to them read and ask them to talk about what they notice.
I've explored in some detail three examples of the mysterious
dimension of Writing With Power: wrongness and felt sense, quality
and bad writing, mere sharing. In these and other realms, I'm still a
cheerleader for the mysterious, the roundabout, the tacit. I'm still
guilty of what has been called "romanticism." But while this dimen
sion of the book is perhaps the most obvious one, I'm more struck
now, as I look back, by a different and less noticed rational dimension:
my hunger to analyze and control the mystery. It was this that led me
to my subtitle: "techniques for mastering the writing process."
If the dimension I described above shows me as a longhaired
nineteenthcentury romantic, this one shows me as an eighteenth
century classicist—or a shorthaired twentiethcentury technician of
the writing process with a slide rule on my belt. (My first teaching
experience was at M.I.T. in the days of short hair and slide rules.)
I've always raised my eyebrows at what feels like the hyperratio
nality in Linda Flowers work. She stresses repeatedly that we should
always start by planning and setting goals. She's whistling the opposite
tune to my "Just write off into the blue and see where you get, the
hell with planning." And yet really, I am just as guilty of rationality—
indeed of lusting after a shrewder rationality—by thinking that we
can plan with better vision. I'm arguing that we can make a better
plan if we plan for nonplanning; we can write better if we build in
periods where we remove goals from our mind; we can meet the
needs of readers better if we sometimes put readers out of mind—
especially at early stages.
The romantic dimension of my book tricked people into thinking
that I'm just peddling mystery: the Zen of writing, bad is good. But
really I'm saying that we can consciously take hold of ourselves and,
introduction
xxiii
in a real sense, control our productive process. If we think carefully
and practice, we can learn to resist certain habits, we can set aside
certain times for nonplanning and freewriting, and thereby find a
rational path for writing—even though it may not look rational com
pared to conventional notions of rationality and control.
And so I have to confess my longstanding hunger for a more
sophisticated technology or larger rationality. What has always driven
me in my writing about writing is an impulse for analysis—for under
standing and controlling the mysteries that often baffle or block us
when we try to write. But to be as deeply rational as I want to be, I
have learned to give hostages to irrationality, noncontrol, garbage, and
chaos. I conclude that we can try to plan or choose times for this
dimension, but we can also plan to recognize that sometimes it will
knock on our door when we are not expecting it—and we can decide
that stopping what we are doing and going with the unexpected is
part of our plan.
In my hunger for control perhaps I risk hubris or oversimplifica
tion. I've taken hits for this too. I remember sending an article to the
leading journal for composition studies and getting back a rejection
based on a reviewer writing: "Hasn't this writer ever heard what
everyone knows?—that writing is a recursive process?" (I quote
loosely from memory, but the reviewer didn't mince words).
"Recursive" had come to be one of the canonical buzzwords in the
profession, and this reviewer was talking about the recent, extensive
research showing how often both skilled and unskilled writers circle
around and move back and forth, again and again, among contrasting
activities like planning, writing down some words, thinking about crit
icisms, pondering, putting down more words, changing the words,
writing more words, thinking about plans, rearranging the words and
so on. Because I emphasized the need to separate the generating
process from the revising process, I appeared to this reviewer like a
troglodyte who was trying to resurrect the old fashioned, rigid dis
credited talk about "set stages in the composing process."
I'm not arguing that we should be so rigidly unrecursive as to com
plete all our generating before we do any revising—and then engage
in nothing but revising and permit no generating. My emphasis is not
so much on restricting ourselves to two stages but on trying to culti
vate and heighten two mentalities—perhaps going back and forth
occasionally between them. We can have some recursiveness and still
emphasize differentiation of mentalities.
xxiv Introduction
But in the end I'm fairly guilty: I am pushing against recursiveness.
For over my years of writing and teaching, I have grown more confi
dent in my belief that it helps to try for as much generating as possi
ble at the start of a writing project, and push away negative criticism
till later. That is, we benefit from making a conscious effort to block
all those behaviors that we so naturally engage in while we are trying
to write a draft:
• sitting there trying to figure out our main point or trying to hone
a careful "thesis statement";
• carefully revising and polishing a paragraph before moving on
—especially the first introductory paragraph (when we haven't
yet written the body of the piece that this introduction will have
to introduce);
• trying to decide on the right word (instead putting down the three
wrong ones that come to mind and seeing where they lead);
• looking up corrections for spelling and rules for grammar (in
stead of settling for temporary approximations);
• working hard to make the outline just right;
• pondering the order of paragraphs or sections—often rearrang
ing things;
• sitting there thinking about criticisms that someone might make;
• reading over a phrase or sentence or paragraph again and again
—changing and rechanging the wording to make it more pre
cise, more graceful, more intelligent, less clunky;
• carefully planning fonts, pitch sizes, margins, and other matters
of format and document design.
These are premature revising behaviors. Every one of them is just
right for revising, but they get in our way if we use them while still
writing an early draft—while we are trying to generate as many words
and thoughts as possible. Premature revising is counterproductive in
various ways. When we put ourselves in a correcting, faultfinding
frame of mind, we usually have more trouble coming up with new
and interesting ideas. We see faults in ideas before we've had a
chance to work them out, and we get distracted in our thinking by all
the fixing and correcting at the surface level. Besides, premature
revising usually gets us to spend time fixing or correcting things that
we later throw away. Or worse yet, we don't throw away something we
ought to throw away, because we've invested so much time and
energy massaging it that we can't bear to let it go.
The first goal, then, is to hold off revising and the revising mental
introduction xxv
ity till we have a great deal of material. But is the matching principle
just as important?—preventing ourselves from generating new ideas
while revising?
On the one hand, of course it's great to welcome new ideas during
revising. The process of seeing faults and moving things around will
almost always lead to new ideas—especially when we notice holes
that need to be filled. That is, it's more important to push away criti
cal thinking during earlier stages than it is to push away new ideas
during later stages. New ideas are always welcome; criticism is not
always welcome.
Yet on the other hand, there is still a value in pushing away the
generative mentality during revising. The point is clearest if we con
sider ari extreme or limiting case: copyediting. If we try to copyedit
and still think about our ideas and our style, we may improve our
ideas and style, but we will definitely sabotage our copyediting. For
it's difficult to see surface mistakes when we are looking through the
surface to what lies beneath. So too with revising in general: revising
can trigger new ideas, but this will muddy and prolong the revising
process. Any good new idea is likely to put a kink in our sequence of
parts or slightly disturb what we thought was our main idea or theme.
We always needs a final stage of uninterrupted revising i