JAC Volume 3, Issue 1/2

Writing involves a writer and a text and the relationship between them (let us disregard reader and subject for the time). As text grows and changes, the relationship between writer and text changes. Successful writing happens when the relationship between writer and text passes through several stages to full maturity; writing breaks down when that relationship fails to develop.

I am talking about the writing process in this odd-sounding way—as if the text were a living thing—because it seems to me more accurate to the feel of writing than the usual descriptions. If we say that a text is planned, written, and rewritten, we imply that the writer is the agent who shapes the product after his or her will. The relationship is one-way: the writer affects his or her material. The writer's relationship to the text, his or her psychological distance from it, is fixed, static. The text changes as it evolves; the writer does not.

But is this the way writing works? I think that texts are not nearly so passive. Writing feels like an ongoing dialogue with one's text, as if the text were continually interacting with the writer and changing his or her idea of what its final shape should be. It is like a sculpture emerging from stone, suggesting new ideas as more of its form becomes visible. Text helps shape its own destiny. Nancy Sommers makes a convincing case that recursiveness is an essential feature of the writing process; that most writers regularly pause to read some part or all of what they have written before they write more seems indicative of the active role of the text.¹ William Faulkner speaks of writing fiction as following characters around to see what they say and do.² Writers in general testify repeatedly to the importance of revision; this is another way of saying that text must influence the writer and change his or her vision before the writing process is complete. The relationship between writer and text is two-way: one of mutual influence, give and take.

If one accepts a dialectical relationship between writer and text, what then are the grounds for saying that this relationship changes during the writing process, that the writer moves through a series of different connections to the text? At this point, I would like to draw upon the work of William J. Gordon and the Cambridge Synectics Group. Gordon's book Synectics offers insight into the emotional dynamics of creativity. Synectics is based on research into group problem-solving; for several decades, Gordon and his associates have been observing small groups of professionals from various disciplines as they attempt to solve problems in applied technology. They have found that the feelings of an individual or group go through significant and predictable alterations during the process of solving a problem. Gordon identifies four distinct and successive psychological states: la. detachment, lb. involvement, 2. deferment, 3. speculation, and 4. autonomy of object. If Gordon's findings accurately portray the creative process in general, they would most likely apply to the writing process. I would like to consider Gordon's description of creative process in terms of what we know about writing and the teaching of writing.

Gordon's first movement is from detachment to involvement, from being removed and distant to feeling oneself inside a problem, vitally connected with it and committed to it. I think that our profession's overwhelming experience is that when a student writing fails, it fails because the student does not make this movement. Theme-writing, the Canned Essay, the five-paragraph theme, and English are some of the names for the detached and lifeless prose that convinces the reader that the writer does not care about what he or she is saying. One way of looking at the problem: the writing fails because the relationship between writer and text does not make even the first step in development.

Gordon's next state is deferment, that sense of disciplining oneself against premature closure. When one moves from detachment to involvement, this major change in perspective often feels like a breakthrough, and then one wants to wrap up the problem and be done with it. There is psychological pressure to finish the job. At this time, creators want to "settle" for what they have got; they have to fight off this impulse in order to entertain other possibilities. I think that deferment could help to explain the common phenomenon of student resistance to revision. After the psychological breakthrough has been made which brings writers close to their texts, it is difficult for them to move back in the opposite direction, to change what has been accomplished, and to look for alternatives when they have invested themselves in a particular version.

Speculation follows deferment. One is free from the hold of one's original draft. One can play with the possibilities in the text, What if I put b before a? What if I drop a and b altogether and try c?

"Autonomy of object" is Gordon's phrase for the feeling that the project has taken over from its creator, that the solution to a problem has taken over and is working itself out. The creator seems to be almost a spectator rather than a participant. Autonomy of object is closely connected with what Gordon calls Hedonic Response, "that warm feeling of 'being right' long before there is any pragmatic rationale, any examination of the validity of this pleasurable feeling."³ Experienced writers know autonomy of object at those moments when a text begins to write itself, when language is flowing, when sentence follows sentence so naturally and automatically that the writer seems more like recorder than composer. Text is finally free to find its shape and meaning. During these times, writing feels good. Students who never reach the autonomy of object stage with a writing project know writing as demanding, painful, and ultimately unrewarding work; students who do reach this stage find the reward for the work—the experience of deep pleasure in composing. Joy is not too strong a word.

What can writing teachers gain from Gordon's model of the successive mental states in creativity? I think Gordon's model highlights the crucial steps in the development of the student writer: the movement from detachment to involvement, deferment of closure in order to play with a text, and the deep satisfaction of finding the right formulation for what one wants to say. The model suggests priorities and an agenda: first we should push for engaged prose, and then we should help writers find the patience and the playfulness to work with what they've got until the text takes over. Gordon also has a method for working through the difficult places where creative process can stall; it involves the use of four different kinds of metaphor. (I attempt to explain his system in the previous article and I do recommend it as an approach to invention.) Gordon's model implies that the most important experience for a student writer is working all the way through a writing project to a successful creative conclusion. The further implications are many—teachers should not concentrate on one—short assignments which are assigned, collected, corrected, returned, and forgotten; teachers should allow students to do a good deal of "exploratory" writing, writing in search of a subject that will bear intensive and extensive work; teachers should help students move around a subject, once discovered, from all angles, and provide the support and time necessary for working through a project.

The object of education in writing should be the rich and powerful experience of successful writing—what it really feels like. Once students know writing experientially, they have achieved a relative independence, for then they know what needs to happen, what they want to happen, what will happen with a writing project if they are very diligent—and lucky, for there is no guarantee of success in any creative work. Gordon's model is useful in writing pedagogy because it focuses us on the emotional relationship between student and text and the evolution of that relationship. Nothing matters more in learning how to write than the way the student feels about writing, and Gordon gives us a way to understand the dynamics of feeling during writing.