Post date: Mar 17, 2020 5:35:54 PM
The question that forms the title of this post can be found in an interview with Peter Elbow under Readings and Resources on the WriteBU blog. The interview seems as good a place as any to begin this conversation about practical solutions to a tangible problem: How do I get this work done, now, at this time, in this place?
Peter Elbow is an important scholar in the the field of Composition and Rhetoric. He's perhaps best known beyond the field because he introduced non-stop writing (or prolific writing, or free writing) to academics and to college classrooms. See his books Writing Without Teachers and Writing With Power-- lots of good ideas to be found in them. (Note: Free writing has many advocates and comes in many forms-- see, for instance, Julia Cameron's morning pages and Natalie Goldberg's work. In an upcoming post, I'll talk about how prolific (or free or nonstop) writing can help you, and I'll help you get started with the practice.)
Here's Elbow's answer, which comes about mid-way through the document.
So what's the essential psychological fact about writing for me? It grows out of
this experience of watching myself write and trying to figure out when I get tied
in knots and when I don't get tied in knots. And I think it has to do with the fact
that there's two essential muscles, two essential processes that get involved in
writing. One is the process of opening the doors, that's where making a mess
comes in, allowing a mess to occur. Opening the doors, asking for input,
inviting the maximum amount of thinking words, just letting words come out.
I've tended to call that the creative move, the generative move, the generative
muscle, the creative muscle. You can't write anything unless you generate a lot,
a lot, a lot. And you just need to take everything that comes and not worry
whether it's any good.
But the trouble is you can't write anything that works very well, unless you
emphasize the other muscle which is the clenching, critical, logical, nay saying
muscle that says wait a minute, is this any good? This doesn't work. That's
wrong. This is wordy. This is no good. Unfortunately you need to be critical. At
certain magical moments you can do those two things at the same time, when
everything goes magically well. But most of the time, I find, and I see this in my
students too, it helps enormously to do those two processes one at a time. To
accept garbage to be generative, to make a mess, then after you have a lot of
rich material, too much, then turn around and be critical and nasty and then
engage in organizing too and trying to figure out what goes where.
Most of the interview answers the question indirectly with examples from his experience as a PhD student and a scholar.
Your answer will differ from Elbow's, of course, but his interview offers a way to think about yourself as a writer. Elbow describes how that awareness of himself as a writer-- what he thought, felt, chose, believed-- helped him become the writer he needed to be. Do you have a similar awareness?
Test your experience against his. Do you understand failure, getting started, blocking, voice, and audience in the same way? What about your view of the "two essential processes?"