A Fun One

Friday, February 5th, 2010

After reading the selections from Lauer and Foster, I found myself lost in world of CCCC meetings and NEH seminars; I found myself pondering the meaning of rhetoric, composition, discourse, and linguistics, and how they might be assessed through comparison group studies and meta-analysis. Suddenly I don't even know what I don't know. After breezing through a chapter of Ken Macrorie's "Telling Writing", I wanted to read another 300 pages.

Initially, Macrorie is critical of teaching styles which focus heavily on the mechanics of writing rather than the substance within, leading to dull and wordy papers. As a professor in Take 20 and Beyond stated, one must put down the pen when reading a student's work. I like this thought process. Focusing on ways to enrich creativity and description seems much more beneficial than pointing out flaws in punctuation and spelling, though the later two must not be ignored completely. According to Macrorie, it's because of this lack of genuine writing instruction that frustrated composition instructors have become the victims of their own doing.

Macrorie goes on to submit a series of free-writing samples taken from students at the college, high school, and elementary levels. By comparing the selections, Macrorie is able to show us the difference between robotic writing and truthful, expressive composition. Of course a passage written by a 3rd grader is one of the more thoughtful and imaginative pieces of writing, proving the point that simple, honest expression provides the reader with much more insight than prose that are contrived.

When writing, I've honestly never said to myself, "How would an 8 year old describe this scene?" So that's exactly what I did. After finishing the article, I began to free-write as fast as I could about a childhood experience of mine. I did this for two reasons: 1) I've only practiced this exercise once in a classroom so it seemed like it was time to give it another go, and 2) I don't recall ever writing from the perspective of a child, or at least I don't remember what I wrote as one. I surprised myself by the clarity in which I was able to capture my thoughts as a young boy and really had a good time with it.