From what I read about it, Susan is giving a very fair rendering of what
Marche is up to and she's showing the context, actual and theoretical,
within which he is working. As I said, his WHIPS reminds me of what Donald
Murray recommended and used to do constantly - though I think I said Donald
Graves - my senior's memory failing me again!
Thanks, Susan for taking this on - I love the idea of a CASLL response.
Wendy
-----Original Message-----
From: CASLL/Inkshed [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Susan Drain
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 8:44 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: University Affairs article on writing at universities
Two things:
1. Okay, I'm working on a draft. Give me a little time to process the
ideas.
2. Rob Irish writes:
>"The audience chose this topic for his session, and made a number of useful
suggestions for modifying it."
>Is this writer trying to dodge responsibility by pointing out that others
are as ill-informed as he is? Such claims cast aspersions on democracy.
The note, I suspect, is not so much an attempt to dodge responsibility as to
acknowledge collaboration.
It might be useful to understand WHIPS a bit more. Write Here in Plain
Sight is Sunny Marche's response to his observation that much learning is
tacit and better acquired through observation. He notes that much writing
takes place privately and that many writers don't get a chance to observe
others' writing-in-the-act. Therefore, he claims, most writers don't know
what happens when writing happens. (See Note below) It has been suggested
to him that writing folks (rhetoricians, compositionists, Inkshedders) do in
fact know a great deal about what happens when "writing" happens, and that
perhaps he is conflating a number of different processes under the one term.
He remains convinced, however, that students will learn something about
writing by watching real people writing. So he recruits individuals who are
willing to write in public, using computers and projectors, and most of them
bring projects that they are already working on whether or not they have
actually begun!
drafting. He likes to let his audience choose a project for him to do
right in front of them, so he might (I don't know, I wasn't there) have
said, "One thing I've been thinking about doing is an opinion piece about
who cares about teaching writing at universities" -- and that's what the
audience voted for. The audience consists of students and grad students,
some faculty and community members, and I guess they said their $ 0.02
worth.
Note: He likes to begin presentations on WHIPS by playing Monty Python's
skit on Thomas Hardy writing the first page of one of the Wessex novels, in
which a pair of sports commentators describe the action and make "colour
commentary."
To be fair, the comments he gets from those who attend affirm the value of
the project in their eyes. They are reassured that writing is a messy,
difficult, non-linear process, and so if nothing else, it demonstrates the
foolishness of the idea that a good writer is one whose first draft is her
last draft.
Cheers
Susan
Susan Drain, PhD
Department of English
Mount Saint Vincent University
Halifax, NS Canada B3M 2J6
902 457 6220
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