Book Review: "Writing With Power" by Peter Elbow

Book Review

Writing with Power: Techniques for mastering the Writing Process

By Peter Elbow

Abstract on this review:

For those of you who teach High School composition/English, this book is a must-read. If you are a Teacher-Writer, or aspire to be one, this book is essential. Peter Elbow’s honesty is uproariously provocative and hilarious. He brings in his own experiences as a student, teacher and especially as a writer to compile his philosophy on the writing process. My own teaching philosophy has been significantly shaped by Elbow’s approach to writing and teaching writing.

Peter Elbow is passionately interested in the writing process. He interweaves three themes throughout this powerful book. The first theme he addresses is that writing calls upon two conflicting skills: the ability to create and the ability to criticize. While these two can harmoniously help create a powerful piece of writing, they can also leave us paralyzed. It is important to separate these two skills purposefully. These skills should be employed always in relation to one another, but never simultaneously…or maybe just sometimes. Elbow emphasizes the importance of having a duplicitous relationship with our writing: that of connected creator one minute, and then that of detached and uninvested critic the next. “For it turns out, paradoxically, that you increase your creativity by working on critical thinking. What prevents most people from being inventive and creative is fear of looking foolish…But when you know that this creativity is just the first of two stages, and that you are getting more critical in the second stage, you feel safer writing freely, tapping intuitions, and going out on limbs”(10).

 The second theme is the theme of comparison. Elbow warns us not to think that others are blessed with a certain easy and available faculty with words. We must embrace the belief that almost everyone has the ability to rise to a certain occasion, usually prompted by personal importance or an urgent circumstance, and express a thought or event with eloquence if they are given the right opportunities and connections.

The third theme is to not give in to the helpless feelings we so often encounter when we right, but also be forgiving as we revise and see room for improvement. When Peter Elbow discusses revision, he is convicted and obviously has struggled through some difficult processes through his own writing journey. Elbow suggests that the most honorable aim for revising is the “desire to make things work on readers…I didn’t get to productive revising till I insisted on being heard”(122). Elbow approaches this topic of painful stage in writing, revision, with much insight and possible variations to aid in our quest for effective revision. Elbow insists on the importance of audience and how our revision processes and feedback should always be in accordance with our concrete purpose and audience.

Peter Elbow snarkingly pokes fun at himself, saying that he probably is talking to too many people when addressing the issue of audience and his book on writing. He specifies further that his audience is really “that person inside everyone who has ever written or tried to write: that someone who has wrestled with words, who seeks power in words, who has gotten discouraged, but who also senses the possibility of achieving real writing power”(6).  His audience is anyone who has attempted to write and found it in the least bit painful and cumbersome. I love this. He unites us all based upon the principle that nobody is perfect and that we are all striving to understand this craft. He creates a sense of community and understanding between fellow writers and teachers of writing. His audience is intentionally broad, for being a writer encompasses all of us, to a certain capacity.

On the issue of audience, Elbow possesses an excellent framing question for writers: Whom do I want to serve? We should know whom our writing is serving. It can serve our selves, or the search for truth; it can serve that board of trustees, the dissertation panel, or the editor of Seventeen Magazine. It’s all about knowing who will be reading it and why they will be reading it.  Audience is not an afterthought; it is an intentional focus. Elbow writes “most people struggle along as they are writing something in an effort to make it ‘good writing in general’ instead of thinking carefully or precisely about ‘good for what effect on what reader’”(226).

“Writing for Teachers” was one of my favorite chapters. “As adolescents, especially, we are subject to the tyranny of the crowd. Worse than being caught with your pants down is being caught caring deeply, being corny, vulnerable, pure. But a special teacher gives us permission to care about honor or Dostoyevsky or relativity or irony—not just gags or girls or cars. A good teacher understands us. A good teacher can hear beyond our insecure hesitation or faddish slang to the authentic voice and reach in and help us use it”(217).  I took this chapter as a necessary challenge to become that “special teacher.” I was inspired and equipped with much advice on how to help students become better writers. How we assign papers, and especially how we give feedback to our students can be indicative to their legitimate investment in the craft or not. This is serious business, teaching writing.

After reading Writing with Power, I feel well acquainted with the philosophies and personality of the college professor I never had, but always desperately needed and wanted. Elbow infuses the pages with knowledge, wit, understanding and conviction. I treasured this book and its presentation of a writer’s mind, soul and heart. He balances practicality alongside creativity. Blending them in the form of hilarious anecdotes, and handbook-like excerpts and advice. I suggest this book unreservedly for any writer, or writer-wanna-be, out there.