Writing with power : techniques for mastering the writing process / Peter Elbow. [print]

Some essentials. An approach to writing Freewriting Sharing The direct writing process for getting words on paper Quick revising The dangerous method: trying to write it right the first time More ways of getting words on paper. The open-ended writing process The loop writing process Metaphors for priming the pump Working on writing while not thinking about writing Poetry as no big deal More ways to revise. Thorough revising Revising with feedback Cut-and-paste revising and the collage The last step: getting rid of mistakes in grammar Nausea Audience. Other people Audience as focusing force Three tricky relationships to an audience Writing for teachers Feedback. Criterion-based feedback and reader-based feedback A catalogue of criterion-based questions A catalogue of reader-based questions Options for getting feedback Power in writing. Writing and voice How to get power through voice Breathing experience into words Breathing experience into expository writing Writing and magic.

A classic handbook for anyone who needs to write, Writing With Power speaks to everyone who has wrestled with words while seeking to gain power with them. Here, Peter Elbow emphasizes that the essential activities underlying good writing and the essential exercises promoting it are really not difficult at all. Employing a cookbook approach, Elbow provides the reader (and writer) with various recipes: for getting words down on paper, for revising, for dealing with an audience, for getting feedback on a piece of writing, and still other recipes for approaching the mystery of power in writing. In a new introduction, he offers his reflections on the original edition, discusses the responses from people who have followed his techniques, how his methods may differ from other processes, and how his original topics are still pertinent to todays writer. By taking risks and embracing mistakes, Elbow hopes the writer may somehow find a hold on the creative process and be able to heighten two mentalities--the production of writing and the revision of it. From students and teachers to novelists and poets, Writing with Power reminds us that we can celebrate the uses of mystery, chaos, nonplanning, and magic, while achieving analysis, conscious control, explicitness, and care in whatever it is we set down on paper. [from publisher description].

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