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Tài liệu Writing with power

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www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com WRITING WITH POWER www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com This page intentionally left blank www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com WRITING WITH POWER Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process Second Edition www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com Peter Elbow New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in 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. www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Elbow, Peter. Writing with power / Peter Elbow., 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-512017-5. — ISBN 0-19-512018-3 (pbk.) 1. English language—Rhetoric 2. Report writing. I. Title. PE 1408.E39 1998 808'.042'—dc21 97-45556 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 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 permission 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. www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com 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 Yeats, and Macmillan London Limited. This page intentionally left blank www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com I dedicate this book to Cami with my love www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com 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 interesting; 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 intimidated. 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. www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com 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 people 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 Wakeman, 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 elsewhere, 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 succession 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 sustain 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 comment that made it better. www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com 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 www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com 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 Open-ended 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. Cut-and-Paste 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. Criterion-Based Feedback and Reader-Based Feedback, 240 www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com 22. A Catalogue of Criterion-Based Questions, 252 23. A Catalogue of Reader-Based Questions, 255 24. Options for Getting Feedback, 264 VI. POWER IN WRITING, 279 Introduction, 279 25. Writing and Voice, 281 26. 27. 28. 29. How To Get Power through Voice, 304 Breathing Experience into Words, 314 Breathing Experience into Expository Writing, 339 Writing and Magic, 357 A Select Annotated Bibliography on Publishing prepared by J. C. Armbruster, 375 Index, 379 This page intentionally left blank www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com 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 self-contained chapters that readers could use in any sequence they want. But now, looking back, I see certain coherences I didn't see then. I see first what commentators also noticed most: my so-called "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 quality or critics. Just write." This is the je ne sais quoi dimension of writing. 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: www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com 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 encounters, 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 purification 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, "electricity" and personal salvation, the more "voice" appears to be shortsighted and inappropriate. (Hashimoto 80-1) 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. www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com (1) Wrongness and felt sense. Once after I led a series of workshops here at the University of Massachusetts, a faculty participant told me sheepishly that some of them had taken to calling me "WriteIt-Wrong 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 breaking 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 experiencing 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 parody 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 refusing-tobudge 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 couple ol stages to get to this point.) I've been describing a narrow example of feedback, though a pertinent 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 happened 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, www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com xvi Introduction this story is finally clear. And for this clarity, I am indebted to an important 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 attitude 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 discouragement." (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 www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com 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 corrected 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 understanding 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 people 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 syntax, 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.* www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com 'There's actually a third kind of inarticulateness that I want to describe, but I have to admit a blatant self-interest. For this is a disability that I suffer from, but I want to re-define 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 "husband"). 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 ready-made 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 nonverbal 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 meaning 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 freewriting 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." www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com (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 carelessness. 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 people actually want to read by choice. Much "excellent" school and college 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 verbally 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 badness, 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 fighting 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 half-understood ideas, not risking language that has the resonance that comes from being close to the bone. Students can get rid of badness 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 badness. 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 www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com
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