Embedded Files
All-Encompassing Composition:
Writing as an Act of Wholeness
Why I Don't Like Sports and Love Sports Stories
Every year, the Super Bowl comes and goes as I type at my computer, or wait in line for another new horror novel, or do anything else but watch football. The only baseball players I know of are Jackie Robinson and Babe Ruth (although, I do love Ruth’s candy bar). In high school, I went to Friday night home games to buy concessions and to people-watch behind the bleachers, hoping to think of new stories because that’s where my heart was.
There’s nothing wrong with sports, mind you; the majority of the U.S. population would certainly agree with that. I have just never been interested in them. You can imagine my mom and dad’s surprise, then, when I came home in the fourth grade with a teacher-lauded poem about baseball—a poem I had written. I remember we had just read a story about a little league player who beat all odds and won his first game. That same week, I had seen a video of a batter running—flying, really flying—across the bases. I have still never hit a ball myself like that in my life, but even as a young writer, I connected to something in that player’s joy. Pardon the extra helping of cheesiness here, but that joy became a part of me, and I wanted to feel it in a way that I was just beginning to know how to—by creating that poem and writing—flying, really flying—across the page.
Writing Fullness from Theory
Ever since then, I have understood something that many creative writers understand deep down, even without the need to directly articulate it: writing is an act of fullness. It involves all parts of the writer— body, mind, and yes, whatever you equate to the soul. Truthfully, this is the case for supposedly rigid college-level academic writing as much as it is for wide-flowing free verse; Charles Bazerman and Howard Tinberg express this idea as they highlight the “emotional engagement of scientific writers” who, in the presence of theory, methodology, and logical content, must still write with a “passion for the subject that turns a writer’s full mind and thought to the task of producing new words and ideas” in order to create something effective and meaningful (74-75). And yes, lab reports and research papers can be meaningful. They can also be more expressive forms of writing than we give them credit for, even if that expression must be conveyed in an academic, formal, or objective tone. The care the writer puts into the act of writing itself is an example of this truth, and the main points, the omissions, and the diction they choose all come from their composed selves within. If, for example, a researcher were to write about the effects of a newly discovered bacteria within an ecosystem, then they would still utilize their own thoughts, views, and passions even unknowingly when writing about their findings. Would they frame the bacteria as an exciting new discovery? Would they choose to look at potential dangers associated with it over the benefits? There are so many options the writer could choose from—so many directions the writer could take—and all of them would and should come from a place of care so that they can move and inform readers appropriately. Personalities and selves can shine through works even without the use of creative metaphors or rhymes. (However, there is even a place for more creative elements of writing in academic spaces if they are used purposefully and skillfully).
In other words, whatever we write must involve the completeness of us as individuals, including our thoughts, our emotions, and even “other mental processes ... as well as psychosocial and physiological phenomena” (Dryer 73). When I was writing my poem, my composition processes had both internal and external impacts on me—I made connections to the subject as I, too, was experiencing a pleasure of accomplishment not much unlike what my written baseball player was feeling; I smiled; I felt the heat of happiness rising to my chest and my active hand. The funny thing is, as I write this blog post for my class and my career (not for the flowery praises of being a poet), I feel the same. I feel whole in my composing—I feel that I am constructing myself through the wholeness that composition provides me because it both “challenges and exposes elements of emotions and psychological structures” (Bazerman and Tinberg 75) that I can reflect upon and build on across compositional mediums. The scientist is a person with just as much subjectivity and complexity as the poet, after all. This wholeness that writing illustrates is described by Bazerman and Tinberg as embodied cognition, which is a concept that “draws in addition upon the physical and affective aspects of the composing process” (75). It is both the way our words make us feel and the physical acts associated with those feelings as they relate to our sense of being. That wholeness of self that writers contain and craft across genres is what I want to help students feel as well.
This image ("Figure 1"), which was taken from Caroline Hummels and Jelle van Dijk's "Seven Principles to Design for Embodied Sense-Making," illustrates the factors involved in embodied cognition. The brain, the body, and our world experiences and knowledges make up the concept of embodied cognition; the concept itself, then, is formed from a wholeness of being and self, and that same wholeness is needed in writing processes.
No matter how formal or informal, how creative or clinical, how personal or academic a piece of writing must be, the truth is that there is always room for the depths of the self. Of course, it is far easier on the surface to involve your whole self in writing a short story than in writing a research paper. Looking back at our researcher, they must make connections with their writing that go beyond the use of technical jargon and lab-notes because they must also filter their compositional process through their own experiences and perspectives. Awareness of perspective in writing allows the writer to make connections, which is what I believe could be the answer to promoting the fullness of compositional processes to students.
The image depicts both a scientist and a creative writer engaged in composing processes. While these processes may look different, both visibly stem from a place of care and are emotional and intellectual.
External Influences Internal
In How Learning Works, Marsha C. Lovett et al. make it known that “Students do not come into our courses as blank slates but rather with knowledge gained through other courses and through daily life” (42). Students also do not come into writing as empty as the initial page, and they have prior knowledge, prior feelings, and prior experiences that can be used to make beneficial connections to even the dryest of writing assignments. We as educators should encourage students to tap into those connections not only to help make their writing more interesting but also to assist that fullness of composition they must seek as learners. One way to aid those connections for fullness in the classroom environment would be to give students a low-stakes assignment in which they must deliberately choose a topic of little interest to them, they must research it, they must list 2-3 ways they could connect it to something that interests them greatly, and then they must finally write a short one-page paper or discussion post using those connections.
Letting students read from poet Richard Hugo's book Triggering Towns can also serve the purpose of emphasizing physical presence and experiences as aspects of wholeness that contribute to writing processes. The book itself details the ways in which places, events, and the like can inform writing, and this notion of the external influencing the internal also relates back to embodied cognition how writing itself is the result of the whole writer as a human being. Although Hugo's book has a creative focus, it can be tied to academic writing through teacher-assigned prompts and classroom reading discussions.
Now I must leave you, dear reader, to write a new piece about the Super Bowl.
Works Cited
Bazerman, Charles and Howard Tinberg. "Writing Is an Expression of Embodied Cognition." Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, edited by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle, Utah State University Press, 2016, pp. 74-75.
Dryer, Dylan B.. "Writing Is (Also Always) a Cognitive Activity." Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, edited by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle, Utah State University Press, 2016, p. 73.
Lovett, Marsha C. et al. How Learning Works. 2nd ed., E-book, John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2023, p. 42.
Hummels, Caroline and Jelle van Dijk. "Figure 1." "Seven Principles to Design for Embodied Sense-Making," ResearchGate, 2015, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270794876_Seven_Principles_to_Design_for_Embodied_Sensemaking.
Bazerman, Charles and Howard Tinberg. "Writing Is an Expression of Embodied Cognition." Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, edited by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle, Utah State University Press, 2016, pp. 74-75.
Dryer, Dylan B.. "Writing Is (Also Always) a Cognitive Activity." Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, edited by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle, Utah State University Press, 2016, p. 73.
Lovett, Marsha C. et al. How Learning Works. 2nd ed., E-book, John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2023, p. 42.
Hummels, Caroline and Jelle van Dijk. "Figure 1." "Seven Principles to Design for Embodied Sense-Making," ResearchGate, 2015, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270794876_Seven_Principles_to_Design_for_Embodied_Sensemaking.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse