Peter Elbow is a rather popular in the world of free writing. In 1973, his book Writing Without Teachers was published. In this piece, he tries to explain ways to improve one’s writing, specifically those that experience a “block”. The solution that he offers is free writing, a continuous flow of writing. Anything that comes to mind should be written down, without worrying about grammar, spelling, repeating yourself, or making corrections. Even when you can’t think of anything, you write about your lack of thoughts until something else comes to mind, even if it’s not exactly along the same lines as what you were originally writing about. Elbow says, in the attached interview, that you need to “make a mess” in order to know and understand what you’re writing about and where you are trying to go with your writing.
The argument that Peter Elbow makes is that people try to “rewrite, rethink, and revise” all while still trying to put their thoughts into words. Then, becoming overwhelmed with all of the steps combined into one, they lose track of the point they were trying to make and struggle to get back to the ideas that they previously had. He is not saying that this is the fault of the writer, though, because that is how everyone was taught to write. Throughout the span of a school career, everyone is taught to produce a finished and acceptable piece of work on their first try, and that editing should be a small task to finish up with. People are taught to write with grammatical perfection when the whole point of writing is to actually write. People have become more occupied with presentation than actual content. Free writing is the process of separating the actions of writing and editing.
tjc2012 