How to Notice Your Preconceptions about Writing

Preconceptions are gambles we take on the next writing moment. Preconceptions can cause major problems for writers, whether they're preconceptions about the immediate writing task at hand or about our long-term writing ability. In the previous post, we talked about genre as a common preconception of writers, for example.

To manage the impact of preconceptions on our writing, we'd first need to be able to see them. Preconceptions are tricky and elusive, however; they frequently pass through our mind without our noticing. Lacking a systematic investigation of self-ethos (or the way the self represents itself and its abilities to itself), we are usually at the mercy of this invisible agent. So how do we spot writing preconception?

One method is to try a quick, informal intrapersonal rhetorical analysis. In schools, writing instructors frequently assign interpersonal rhetorical analysis assignments (examining the rhetorical moves of another writer), but we don't typically look at how writers' self-talk is a form of persuasion. 

We don't need to write a full-blown analysis essay: a quick freewrite or momentwrite prior to starting our writing day should do the trick.

In the freewrite or momentwrite, ask yourself these questions: 

* Right now, what are you persuading yourself to do or think about your writing?

* How are you talking to yourself about your writing? What tone are you adopting?

* What sorts of emotional appeals (could fall on a range of positive/support to negative/critical) are you using on yourself about your writing? Are their word choices or images, for instance, designed to make you feel a certain way?

* What are you assuming about your ability to complete the writing task or about the outcome of this project?

Remember that your answers could be task-specific to the piece you're working on today or they could be about your overall, long-term ability and prospects as a writer (or a combination of both).

Freewrite or momentwrite for 5-10 minutes. Afterwards, take a look at what you've written, searching for ways you speak to yourself about writing. Don't judge yourself for hosting those thoughts. Simply make them visible--this will lessen their behind-the-scenes impact.

Momentwriting: A Mindful Alternative to Freewriting

To be increasingly mindful as we write, we might need a new exercise to complement freewriting.

Without a doubt, freewriting is invaluable in helping writers capture their internal language on the page or screen. Usually, it's one of the few times in a mainstream writing education in which students are encouraged to see their natural ongoing inner verbal production as a legitimate form of writing. Freewriting does wonderful work in helping writers practice acceptance of flaws and redundancy.

Momentwriting, however, is possibly a more complete depiction of the present moment. In momentwriting, writers are attuned to their literal situation. The device fosters mindfulness because it does not ask the writer to omit any part of the present writing moment.

Momentwriting does not prescreen the moment in the way that freewriting does. Instead, it invites new wording as well as nonverbal experiences. The preconception that we are to keep up a non-stop writing pace is dropped.

Unlike freewriting, momentwriting doesn’t goad the hands to keep up with a certain handwriting or typing rate but rather lets the pace happen in accord with intrapersonal talk and emerging mental formations. There are moments in which the person is not producing words while remaining attentive, through the breath, to the writing moment.

Instead of a forced verbal march that pushes past blank moments, momentwriting includes blanks as factors in a writing situation that are worth recording: the shriek of a blue jay, the after taste of coffee, a sudden wave of wordless energy, a wordless image, a passage in which mainly the breath is noticed, attention to a gesture made while typing.

What does unite the experience of momentwriting is not the push to keep writing but instead an ongoing awareness of the breath. A person doing a momentwriting may very well stop writing down words for minutes at a time, but throughout that time, he or she is observing inhalation and exhalation.

Momentwriting allows people to track impulses and instincts, the inchoate and nonconceptual, and to honor them as part of their writing experience.

Writers use visual elements to record the no conceptual parts of a momentwrite (blanks are depicted through tabs or brackets; parenthesis or italics is used for material typically omitted from a freewrite, such as a tension in one’s shoulder or a scratchy sleeve).

In the below momentwriting, I’ve used brackets to indicate a lull where I’ve left the writing and backslash to indicate when I was aware of a physical sensation related to the posture and effort of typing without putting the sensation to words (on other occasions, words did arise for a physical sensation):

Reason why my impulse is to change pens mid-stream during a writing session—moving from Mont Blanc to Bic ballpoint to magic marker to dollar store mechanical pencil, from black to blue to pink to green—is to reflect (and capture) demarcate changes in time  [               ] that it is a new moment, that the phrase or idea is on a distinct flow in that intrapersonal babble passage. This tea tastes nice. An attempt to not be unified not hold writing together at this early stage of invention. /////  To do so suggests undue precautions taken for considerations given to an unknown and future audience. And that means departing from moment. ///// For a long time, I have wondered though without doubting or challenging or correcting it why I have this inclination. In a passage like this one where I don’t change pens—I’m pounding the keys too hard—state of flow “inspiration,” glued together with more continuation through voice, sense of non-stop moment, this tempo of getting it all down, that shoulder is hurting. Sometimes change in pen though a form of evaluation (did I forget to answer that email from M.) to highlight potential excellence—so to evaluate, remind myself of what to (later) pursue.

Like freewriting, it should navigate from the left to right margin: this preserves the intrapersonal rhetoric as a text, endowing it with the semblance of a more formalized piece of writing.  

A message reinforced by momentwriting is that all of a writer’s internal experience is acceptable: freewriting went to considerable lengths to send this message of acceptance, but momentwriting is possibly a more radical form of writing self-acceptance.

 * image from alchemyindesign

Summoning and Banishing Your Audience Ghosts

I was searching for a way to make the impact of those invisible audiences-in-our-head tangible to first-year writing students, and the other day I found a strategy that I think might have worked.

The important notions that audience is a matter of proximity and that most audience is made-up can easily be lost on students. Too abstract. Students can have a hard time perceiving the fundamental and blessed vacancy of the present moment for the purposes of writing. They need tangible proof of the impact of those imaginary creatures, those self-generated conversations that can slow down writing or cause anxiety. They need that proof in order to start taking steps to avail themselves of the vacant openness of the present (steps like opting to freewrite, switch audience-in-the-head, do messy drafts).

So I asked my students to do 3 separate freewrites in class over the space of 30 minutes.

First Freewrite:  This one was written to a prompt I put on the board. Students were told to freewrite for 5 minutes and that the freewrite would be partially shared: they would be asked to paraphrase an idea or sentence and say it to us afterwards.

Second Freewrite:  This time, students were told that we would write to the same prompt but that after 5 minutes, I would randomly select 2-3 students to read aloud their entire freewrite to the group. So this freewrite fell into the category of shared and focused (given a topic).

Third Freewrite:  This time, I told students they would start their homework in class (I showed them the exercise assignment sheet) in a disposable freewrite. They wouldn't be able to keep the screen or sheet of paper from their freewrite. After 5 minutes, everyone would be required to crumble the freewrite into either a virtual or 3-d recycling bin.

What Happened:  While I freewrote with the students, I also noticed what was going on with them in terms of their posture, body language, and affect. During the Second Freewrite, a call & response of sighs went around the classroom--though the students didn't seem aware that they were sighing. I also noticed with my own disposable freewrite that I leaned much closer to my notebook, that my handwriting became bigger, that I drove the pen down onto the paper with greater emphasis.

When we discussed the experience of the 3 freewrites as a group (I didn't in fact make anyone paraphrase or involuntarily share), students noted differences in the quantity and quality of the content of the freewrites.

They talked about how the Second Freewrite elicited far fewer words: they had tangible proof on the page or screen that an imaginary audience had slowed down their writing. They spoke of being more cautious, of plotting out matters of word choice and organization, of editing while composing.

Students found the highest number of new ideas in the Third Freewrite and said that those ideas were not just more numerous but also of greater interest to them. I felt the same way: the best ideas I'd had all day were definitely lying around on my sheet of paper. Some resented having to dispose of this freewrite (I said they didn't have to).

The Third Freewrite seemed to suggest that ideal circumstances for invention call for this sort of privacy: a low-stakes task environment in which even the self isn't an audience for its writing. That writing is disposable, fleeting, part of the moment. Because the student wouldn't be keeping a copy of the disposable freewrite, even the student's self wasn't a (long-term) audience for the text.

We always have the opportunity to step into a circle of privacy with our writing. It's a privacy in which we kick out considerations of what others may think in the future, kick out any consequence to our words, any judgement. An activity like these three freewrites helps show how often our imaginary, evoked audiences interfere with the possibilities of an open and vacant present moment for writing.

If you find yourself stuck or slowing down on a writing task, consider doing these Three Freewrites. Freewrite about your project knowing you'll paraphrase a passage to a friend or on Facebook or Twitter. Then freewrite thinking you'll be showing the entirety to a reader. Then do a disposable freewrite. See if you don't summon your audience ghosts--and see if you don't send them off to give yourself a break.
 

Conceptual Metaphors for the Writing Experience



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What sorts of metaphors or imagery about writing are you carrying around in your head?

As I've said on previous posts, it's important to consult your intrapersonal or inner dialog in order to write with ease, trust, and fluency. (See the post, "How to Make Contact with Your Inner Dialog" from September 2012, for instance.)

Part of noticing that intrapersonal conversation involves finding out how we talk to ourselves about our writing. So we turn to the intrapersonal to find content but also to find our opinions about the writing process, audience, and our writing ability. Chances are very good that those intrapersonal opinions are having a great deal of influence on a person's writing experience--and ability. It's important then to be mindful of those views we're carrying around because they have a tendency to operate unseen and unheard.

One of the best ways to become mindful of these internal commentaries is to conduct a search for any conceptual metaphors or images pertaining to writing.

Conceptual metaphors organize our everyday functioning: they organize our perceptions and actions. As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Live By put it: conceptual metaphors (also called cognitive metaphors) are "pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action,"

More than just a metaphor in a single sentence or line of poetry, conceptual metaphors are large conglomerates of thought. As Philip Eubanks describes them, they are "metaphor expressions [that] recruit larger metaphoric concepts." An easy example is the conceptual metaphor in English that "Time is Money." Behind this three-word metaphoric phrase is an influential belief of common assumption; it has the potential to change what you do in the next hour or how you go about the rest of your adult life.

Or your adult writing life.

Let's turn to a few common words for different aspects or moments in the writing process.

While each of these is not a metaphoric phrase per se, they each contain an image or association, in part because of their connotative language:

Draft
Brainstorming
Freewriting
Prewrite
Outline
Rewrite
Revision
Feedback
Proofreading

We regularly use these terms to talk about writing, yet each of them carries around usually unrecognized assumptions and views about what it means to write.

Draft: breezy, temporary, fleeting, insubstantial, invisible (notice only its effects). As one of my graduate students also said--draft, as in pulling a draft beer (a volume, abundance, a small sample from a much larger supply).

So those could be connotations of "draft," but what might be the effect of those connotations?

(One way to figure this out is to come up with alternatives or synonyms for a word. A synonym for "draft" would be "stage." How is "stage" different in what it suggests than "draft"? By finding alternatives, you can better notice the original language.)

Well, for one, if we carry around the idea of an early stage of a composition as fleeting, this could correspond nicely with the sense of impermanence, if we are of the Buddhist mindset. That breeziness or invisibility, however, could make early writing seem hard to catch--and increase the difficulty of starting out on a piece. Then again, if draft is like pulling from a keg, this suggests a big inner supply.

Each of the words on that list (and many others) can be explored. Please tell us what you think. What are the connotations of those ordinary words about writing? What sorts of imagery do they contain for you? After you find an image or connotation for one of the words, ask yourself, "What could be the impact on my writing experience of that image or connotation?" Send along your comments below.