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Peter Elbow on the Process of Writing

Peter Elbow in his essay "Closing My Eyes as I Speak" describes an aspect of the process of writing and demonstrates how a writer can improve his or her work by writing for themselves rather than for an audience. Begin with an analogy to public speaking, where the speaker may close his or her eyes in order to concentrate more fully to find the right word. The writer often needs to do the same thing, to push away the audience while struggling to figure something out and to improve the writing. Elbow states that there are good reasons for writing with an audience in mind and also good reasons for writing without an awareness of the audience. To understand how to make this work in the writing process, it is necessary to understand the advantages of pushing away the audience and some of the ways of accomplishing it.

Elbow offers a cogent quote from John Ashbery: "Very often people don't listen to you when you speak to them. It's only when you talk to yourself that they prick up their ears" (247). This quote offers a guide for the writer. The audience is often better served when the writer forgets about them during the writing process. Elbow agrees with other commentators that ignoring the audience will usually lead to weak writing at first--Linda Flower calls this "writer-based prose." In the end, though, this weak writing can lead to better writing.

It is not whether the writer should think of the audience but when the writer should do so. Elbow calls the audience a field of force, and the closer the writer comes to this field, the stronger that field exerts on the content of the writer's mind. The writer begins to think too much about what the reader will think, what the reader will approve of, and what the reader might disapprove of in the work. The precise result may depend on the audience. Some audiences are inviting or enabling--they serve the writer by offering a reason to be better. Such an audience brings ou...

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Peter Elbow on the Process of Writing. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 04:37, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1700246.html