Friday, September 17, 2010
Response to Macrorie’s “Telling Writing” and Write Freely Mantra
Ken Macrorie’s Telling Writing was deeply interesting and problematic all at the same time. While I love the notion and concept of writing freely, it deeply troubles me to consider this a legitimate method of writing. Throughout the article I constantly found myself asking how one would use his methods of writing freely with and without focus to invent a legitimate piece of writing. There’s no doubt in my mind that writing freely serves a purpose, but I cannot even fathom that purpose in an academic setting. To just sit down and out my thoughts as truthful as I can serves no purpose academically and I think it would actually hinder my academic identity. Writing without organization, without the invention process as Crowley sees it, seems trite and silly to me. Writing needs to be organized and structured, it needs to be processed and methodically implemented. Otherwise, what you end up with is a stream of consciousness that serves no purpose in an academic setting. If I had to pick out my biggest argument with Macrorie, it would be his blatant lack of consideration for the audience. In my opinion, audience is the most important rhetorical device in any piece of writing. It constructs how you communicate, it applies meaning to a given piece of working, and Macrorie’s complete disregard for considering the audience when one writes seems almost amateurish. True there’s a lot to be said and commended for writing to yourself and for yourself. However, it doesn’t work when communicating and writing outside of yourself. Ken Macrorie’s “Telling Writing” was a fun read and his use of Engfsh is memorable, however his methodology of writing composition doesn’t and cannot function outside the realm of creative writing and even then it's pushing it.
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You can’t turn in a research paper composed entirely in stream of consciousness. In that sense, I understand how you might think that writing freely can’t serve any purpose in an academic setting. But what is an academic setting? If it’s a setting in which learning, teaching, and creating new knowledge are top priorities, then writing freely definitely has a place there. It is a useful tool for teaching students to write authentically and honestly. In the case of students who hate writing already because they’ve always been told that they’re bad at it, it’s a first step in getting them to understand the power writing can have—a power they can harness. As Macrorie illustrates in his essay, meaningful (though erratic) writing can be produced through writing freely. When a student composes anything successful, his self-confidence increases. The more success he has, the likelier it is that he’ll take writing more seriously in general. He’ll become more willing to learn. And if the primary purpose of writing freely here is to help a student realize that he can write effectively, then audience doesn’t matter anyway. The student very well may be writing to himself, but that’s exactly who he needs to be writing to.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your argument that Macrorie ignores the audience in teaching free-writing. It's easy to see that we've not come far from taking everything to the most extreme level of the abstract as possible (asking things like "But what is 'good writing'?" or "What is an 'academic setting'?" or "What do you mean by 'standards'?" and so on. When we play this game of semantics, it seems we're quick to get nowhere. I'm not arguing that what these things are should remain rigid, but there are certain realities that, I think, we all understand until we argue them in theory. Of these realities, everyone in this class knows the audience we write to as "academics." We also understand what this "academic setting" really is. We've seen "good writing" and "bad writing" (note that while we always argue the definition of "good writing" in class, we are also very quick to list things that students do wrong when we grade them). So while I agree with Nannerbot's reply that free-writing has that very positive effect of helping students to write authentically- a point I also argued in my blog about Macrorie- I see the limitations of this method that don't account for the time or scope of the course "First-Year College Composition." If we can restructure either the course, the university, or how students learn, then I'm all about free-writing. Until then, Macrorie offers us a well-evidenced theory that has yet to be made practical.
ReplyDeleteI think that Macrorie's primary purpose is to get students to generate ideas. To generate truly interesting ideas, I think one must explore one's own areas of interest. As an audience member, I've been intrigued by people's passion for things I would otherwise care nothing about. And sometimes the best ideas lie outside of existing paradigms. They involve imagination and a certain degree of insanity. I think of Einstein.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with free writing I think is that people are most passionate and interested in themselves, and who wants to listen to someone rattle off about themselves? An inability to see things outside of oneself indicates an immature, me-centered worldview. And THAT'S what really has no place in academia.
But free writing about something related to oneself, (not all consumed by me, me, me) is a useful tool in academia for discovering interests and ideas, which can lead to real writing later. Instead of the free-writing being the end process, I think it has value as a foundation.