The affordances of writing
Through the practice of writing and teaching, NWP has been learning more about the benefits that writing can bring us, both in communities of writers and on our own. Teachers’ experience and understanding of these ‘affordances’ of writing – distinctive properties of a fuller writing process – helps them deal more sensitively in developing young writers.
Here is a list of some of writing’s affordances :
Simon Wrigley
NWP outreach director
17.2.2017
References:
Yeats: The Circus Animal’s Desertion 1939. ‘Last poems’.
EM Forster: ‘Aspects of the Novel’ 1927. Chapter 5: The Plot
Ursula le Guin: ‘Steering the Craft’ 1998. Chapter 1: The sound of your writing
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Steering-Craft-Exercises-Discussions-Navigator/dp/0933377460
Nadine Gordimer: Radio 4, ‘In Our Time – Writing and Political Oppression’ 1999 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/topics/Nadine_Gordimer
Here is a list of some of writing’s affordances :
- Writing can be difficult for all of us – emotional, disturbing, revelatory. Criticism bristles about it, and some of the severest critics are ourselves: we are more aware than others of how honestly and selectively we’ve portrayed our experiences and feelings.
- Writing can be a door into new worlds and new words, not just a mirror for old ones - and you won't always know where you're going when you open that door. ‘The writer who possesses the creative gift, owns something of which he is not always master.’ (Charlotte Bronte)
- Writing thrives in a rich language context. It is as much to do with talking and reading and looking and listening and imagining – and silence and walking – as it is about making any marks on the page whatsoever.
- Writing freely and regularly, expressing and exploring thoughts and feelings in a trusted community, contributes to mental well-being. (‘It’s all right to be me.’)
- The remorseless insistence on ‘accelerating writing progress’ up a particular, pre-determined incline, blind to personal contexts and unalleviated by free experimentation, can deaden expression and demotivate learners.
- Free-writing can generate thought, trawl the subconscious and help writers confront uncertainty. It is particularly useful for learners wanting to open up experience, rather than close it down. Free-writing keeps thought alive by honouring authentic responses. Its aim can be to catch things ‘new and true’ rather than rushing to get things ‘right and tight’. Writing starts in ‘the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.’ (Yeats)
- Writing can support philosophical enquiry, and help writers understand their own thinking processes. (EM Forster: ‘How can I tell what I think until I see what I say?’)
- Doubts and fears about writing can be diminished by making lists and sharing them before undertaking more extended writing. Witholding ‘closure’ reminds us that all writing is uneven, more or less provisional, belonging to readers as much as to writers.
- Reading aloud (writing which is heard as well as seen), makes it easier to hear when its music – tune, notes and voice – and message are one. ‘A good writer, like a good reader has a mind’s ear ... writers need to train their mind’s ear to listen to their own prose, to hear as they write.’ Ursula le Guin
- The mantling and dismantling of convention - through parody, pastiche, collage, imitation, play and experiment – help writers understand how writing can be reoriented to suit new needs, new purposes, new circumstances.
- Writing alongside each other deepens and strengthens social bonds , conferring authority on the shared, lived experience. Writing together is a way of being – individually, socially, politically - in the world – entering a life of dialogue. ‘The day I am only a writer, I will cease to be a writer.’ (Nadine Gordimer)
Simon Wrigley
NWP outreach director
17.2.2017
References:
Yeats: The Circus Animal’s Desertion 1939. ‘Last poems’.
EM Forster: ‘Aspects of the Novel’ 1927. Chapter 5: The Plot
Ursula le Guin: ‘Steering the Craft’ 1998. Chapter 1: The sound of your writing
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Steering-Craft-Exercises-Discussions-Navigator/dp/0933377460
Nadine Gordimer: Radio 4, ‘In Our Time – Writing and Political Oppression’ 1999 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/topics/Nadine_Gordimer