Writing without Teachers

by Peter Elbow

In Writing Without Teachers, well-known advocate of innovative teaching methods Peter Elbow outlines a practical program for learning how to write. His approach is especially helpful to people who get stuck or blocked in their writing, and is equally useful for writing fiction, poetry, and essays, a ...

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Education, Teaching, Reference, Crafts, Academic

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Peter Henry Elbow was an American academic who was a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he also directed the Writing Program from 1996 until 2000.
As a scholar whose published work raised both academic and popular awareness of scholarship within the field of Rhetoric and Composition, Elbow’s research includes theory, practice, and pedagogy. He is one of the pioneers of freewriting.

Reviews

[Leonard Gaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing without Teachers is now considered one of the early pep talk books about writing, years before Julia Cameron, Anne Lamott and others. But I would bet that, at the time, this book felt iconoclastic and ground-breaking since it advocates an unorthodox approach to reading and writing. In a way, it goes beyond (and isn’t) a mere pep talk for blocked writers.

The last section is an extended philosophical/epistemological essay, but the reader is invited to jump right to the practical considerations and forgo the theoretical part. Most of Elbow’s theory rests upon a fundamental cognitive dichotomy: the “doubting game” (critical thinking) vs the “believing game” (open-mindedness). Indeed, Elbow shows how this dichotomy makes sense on different levels when it comes to reading and writing:

1) The formal or school-type approach to writing is the “doubting game”, i.e., preparing one’s arguments in advance and putting them in order before actually writing. What Elbow proposes instead is to play the “believing game”, using a freewriting method: committing all the messy garbage inside one’s head onto paper and keeping at it—what he calls “growing”. And only then, when everything is laid out, trying to find “good bits wrapped in shit”, summarising, boiling it down, or what he calls “cooking”. Using lots of paper. Editing only at the very end.

2) Elbow applies the same method on the next level: reading and understanding. The “doubting game” instructs us to distance ourselves from a text, treat it rationally, see where it is relevant or consistent and where it is not, and form a firm opinion on it. The “believing game”, on the contrary, invites us to welcome our immediate response to the text (our “inner movie”) in all its complexity and confusion. Elbow also promotes this method for his writing workshops, which are set up to work a bit like group therapy sessions.

More generally, Elbow’s method can also be implemented in the classroom by teaching pupils how to read and write more boldly, freely and pleasurably, instead of drilling them upfront in paragraphing, grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

All in all, a fascinating book, albeit aspects of it are a bit dated, some arguments aiming at structuralism and new criticism, which were in vogue at the time. After the wave of post-structuralism and post-modernism, we have now become more accustomed to playful and erratic types of writing and literature.

[Natalie Chickey · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. I read this years ago when I was struggling with how to improve my high school students' writing, and I wanted to re-visit it now that I am teaching college writing. There are so many good ideas here, but the fact of the matter is still that teaching writing is difficult, really difficult, given the emphasis through a student's educational career on formulaic writing, on the need for standardization in order to be "acceptable" and "correct," on the overwhelming pressure of writing to score proficiently on standardized testing, and on the build-up of fear for writing that students have developed and learned over the years. I have always loved to write, largely because I adore discovery and because I enjoy finding, developing, and cultivating my own voice. There are some wonderful ideas here, some wonderful suggestions, some things I will definitely try out, but there are and continue to be the real-world limitations based on stringent curricula in the schools and state and federal "standards" and excessive testing.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was essentially required reading for the workshopping group that I'm in. While a lot of the techniques in the book will be familiar to people who have been in workshop groups before (decentralized teaching methods, open discussions, circular seating and all that), the emphasis of things like open freewriting exercises, a bravery in one's drafts, and the vast importance in being willing to let yourself make big mistakes and try new things with one's writing can't be appreciated enough. Those first couple chapters really meant a great deal to me.

I do ultimately take issue with the softness of his approach (it's hard to imagine that fiction writers were a prime audience here; he intends a far wider grouping) and his naivety towards being able to express what a good writing teacher can do to speed along the processes. (Even Elbow's later-written introduction acknowledges a certain naivety.)

He's willing to acknowledge in the introduction that great writing teachers do exist, but never returns to that point. He wants writers to make mistakes and learn organically without a teacher appealing to theories and abstractions that will only confuse the student; but good teachers know how to follow that line of thought, to empathize with the limitations and the necessary steps to bridge certain misunderstandings and more quickly guide the student down those same paths. A tribute to what distinguishes those "few good writing teachers" or what have you would serve much in the way of offering advice to teachers who have no choice but to be teachers: people expected to serve some sort of educational use. (You know. Like him.) Some room for improvement.

[David J. Bookbinder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Elbow's Writing Without Teachers, which I first encountered in 1974, changed the way I thought about writing and freed me from one of my chief impediments: the idea that I had to work out in my head, or in an outline, what I wanted to say before I wrote anything down. By introducing the concept of freewriting, Elbow made it possible to start anywhere, and trust that the process of writing without a teacher, and without editing, would be sufficient to get core ideas down, which later editing and revising could polish into something that might never have come to be, using the method drilled into me in high school and college.

[Daniel Pfaltzgraff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an eye-opening book. It was filled with so many things I knew, but yet didn't truly believe either because I felt there was no evidence behind them or I didn't want to believe them for some reason or another. Elbow talks about writing in such a clear, natural way. He deals with many of the doubts and frustrations I have experienced with my own writing. Elbow's ideas on how to grow as a writer, and writing in general, have greatly contributed to my own writing life and enjoyment of writing. Every writer should read this book.

[Caroline Mann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like a revolutionary soldier when I read Peter Elbow and like he is the general, explaining why our revolution is so important.

That’s not a fair comparison, though. I don’t think Elbow is asking for battle with this book. But his ideas are revolutionary, even decades later.

As a teacher of writing and as someone who likes to write herself, this book is fascinating, eye-opening, and energizing. I highly recommend this to my fellow teachers and fellow writers. Elbow’s writing is as intelligent as it is accessible and entertaining.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't remember if I ever finished this - even when I came back to re-read it a number of years later I think I still only read the early part of it, and then got on with writing again. That for me was it's great boon: early in the piece he talks about just writing until you find what it is you're trying to say about a topic, or even trying to find a topic, or a focus. Every time I got to that point I'd go off and write, and the book would be abandoned for a number of years again.

[Jesse]

I read part of this for a class on composition and then finished it for a separate class about games and gameful learning. This is a delightful, fascinating, helpful book. I need to take it more seriously in my own writing life, most of all by simply writing more.

[Horatio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of great points, but some mid

[Seth · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent little resource to empower writers to write and teachers to set up a teacherless writing class. Loved it.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peter Elbow sets out in Writing Without Teachers “to show [writers both inside and outside schools] how to gain control over words,” though doing so “requires working hard and finding others to work with you” (vii). The major advice of Elbow’s first chapter is regular “freewriting exercises”: ten-minute periods of “nonedit[ed]” writing that he presents as a method of giving life to a writer’s voice and writing by cutting through “interruptions, changes, and hesitations” (3-6). His second and third chapters explore two extended metaphors for writing, organic growth and the interaction of ingredients in cooking, that he sees as ways of thinking about writing that can get writers past “where almost everyone starts: helpless before the process of writing because it obeys inscrutable laws. We are in its power. It is not in ours” (13). These metaphors are offered as alternatives to a conventional “two-step” understanding of writing: “First you figure out your meaning, then you put it into language” (14). Returning to his early emphasis on the importance of others, Elbow continues by offering a description of what he calls “the teacherless writing class” (76): a group of 7-12 writers who all submit a piece of writing and offer descriptive, qualitative feedback-- “facts,” not “theories”!--on all other group members’ writing each week. He advises the reader to read carefully and the writer to listen carefully, reminding each that “you are always right and always wrong” (106). Elbow reflects on the experiences that led him to pilot teacherless classes, claiming that a “teacher is usually too good a reader” and that teacherless classes allow students to “use the responses of others to help you fulfill your own goals” rather than an instructor’s (126-27). Elbow believes that “at the moment, writing is a black box,” “making marks on paper and then waiting to see what happens when other people come along and start at those marks” (133), and insists that the teacherless class is a “much more objective, impersonal, and rigorous” way to deal with the black box than “any conventional class” (140). His model “wouldn’t be hard to build … into a university or school” (140), and his final chapter is his theoretical attempt--“in temperate language and reasoned argument”--to argue against those who reject Elbow and his model as anti-intellectual “subjective bullshit” (141). He lays out the “doubting game”--i.e. “the self-extrication game, the logic game, or the dialectic of propositions”--and the “believing game”--i.e. “the involvement or self-insertion game, the metaphor game, or the dialectic of experience” (149). He presents the two as interdependent, but with the former, via Socrates and Descartes, having gained an unproductive monopoly among humanities scholars. Elbow positions the believing game as non-argumentative--a way of putting off “the itch for closure” and “the itch for argument” by attempting to occupy and believe another’s interpretation of a text’s meaning rather than doubting it (177); a game that “deals with particular, unique things” rather than “classes of things” (165), paradoxically ameliorating solipsism, groupthink, and credulity while giving “the little man much more power over the majority than the doubting game” (182).

[Andy Caffrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a terrible book, a complete waste of time for me. I think the book must have been part of some academic hoax or farce back in the 1970s as it reads like a parody of a book to help people write well.

1) The book isn't even about writing well! It's actually a book about the writer, who seems to have such a massively huge desire to be noticed that he had to rely on subterfuge–publishing his personal story under the guise of a college writing text–to get us to look at him.

2) The writing is terrible: self-indulgent more than any other book I've read and stunningly redundant.

3) This is a handbook for writing teachers, of how to organize a class without them! But it was a required text purchase for me and dozens of editions of students around the English-speaking world for our freshman writing class.

4) All it has to offer to students is about a half-hour of actual, possibly useful material, something that could adequately be assembled into a magazine article.

I'm in a rather odd reading period myself right now: catching up on reading all the important books I skipped in school! "The Red Badge of Courage" I barely read in my junior high American it class. Read that two months ago! Glad I did.

Over the next year, I'm working on writing up some material for a book or two and because I only got through the first 30 pages of this book from UCSD Fourth College freshman writing class, I chose to read this one now and cross it off my list.

I expect to get to "Dune," Tolkein, and "Anna Karenina" in the not too distant future as well.

OK, so do you see how I've just spent half of this review writing about myself? That's what Peter Elbow does in "Writing About A Teacher"–er, I mean, "Writing without Teachers!" But his story is 95% of the book.

I'm REALLY glad I never attempted to read this book while tripping!

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting ideas on the writing process, but written in far too scattered and unedited a form to be useful. Chapter Four on the teacherless writing class (a/k/a the writing workshop) is the most useful. Photocopy that from the library and you're set.

[Adam Bessie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Influential, though a little dated now.

[Jennifer Louden · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book for improving your writing outside of workshops and MFA programs.

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

A friend sent me this book and it turned out to be a wonderful find. What Elbow is describing in his "teacherless classes" is a critique group. His reasonings on how and why critique groups work to TEACH writing is sound (based on my own experience with them). His advice on how to deal with writers' block and the non-linear curve on improving and learning are spot on. This is a great book to pull out and read when one is feeling discouraged about their own writing. It's more of a series of extended essays than a "how to" book, which is a nice thing to have when you want to pull something off the shelf that will inspire, reassure, and get you thinking philosophically about writing.

[Irwan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Picked up this book while I am working at the university library. It provides some really general tips on writings and building up to the main idea of creating a Teacherless Writing Classes, basically kind of a workshop or a meet up between people who want to be a writer without having to have a formal teacher.

I was not hooked by any section of the book, they are a bit too general and long-winded, less actionable. It struck me how different a book that was written in the pre-internet (information overload) era. Writing styles has changed, reading time and need have also changed. Similar books written now would have been more aware that they have to compete for attention time.

[Matt Sautman · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I feel that Peter Elbow presents some interesting views on composition, specifically in regards to the metaphors of “growing” vs. “cooking writing,” I sense a bit of datedness in Elbow’s writing. Given that this book is from the 1970s, perhaps that is not too surprising. Yet dated as this book may be, Elbow’s presentation of the teacherless classroom that is oriented towards a writing workshop pedagogy is fascinating, and may be useful not just for students or teachers, but conference presenters and goers as well.

[Truly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saya memang bukan penulis, jika penulis dimaknai sebagai orang yang kerap menghasilkan tulisan dalam aneka bentuk. Urusan kepenulisan saya hanyalah membuat ulasan buku, resume, atau artikel jika diminta. Tapi, kadang saya juga mengalami apa yang dimaksud dengan kebuntuan ide, malas, jenuh, dan sejenisnya.

Kadang, saya juga merasa apa yang sudah buat kurang greget. Buku ini memberikan wawasan mengenai apa saua yang harus dilakukan jikq ingin konaiwten menulis. Berlqtih adalah kunci.

[Chlöe Mobley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked Peter Elbow's idea of a "teacher-less" writing class. I think there are some specific tips that can be drawn from this book, for example his instructions for "showing" your reaction to works written by peers. His main overarching point within "Writing Without Teachers" was just WRITE and to write a lot, without inhibitions - advice that some of us (me specifically) need to be told frequently.

[Autumn Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This was a super interesting and helpful book. However, I gave it such a low rating because it's one I normally wouldn't read. I read it for my profession, and it was great, however there's a lot that I do not agree with. There are some questionable methods, but there are also some that have helped me develop as both a writer and an educator.

[Caera Flood · Rating 2 out of 5]

He mentions that this was originally a pamphlet that he expanded to be a book... it could've just stayed a pamphlet.
He embodies saying a lot with nothing to say. Repeating the same thing in a dozen unnecessarily different ways.
There were some inspiring tidbits but the treasure hunt for those is exhausting.
Out of date.

[Sumema . · Rating 5 out of 5]

In order to form a good style, the primary rule and condition is, not to attempt to express ourselves in language before we thoroughly know our meaning; when a man perfectly understands himself, appropriate diction will generally be at his command either in writing or speaking.

[Mr T · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly ok

Has some good ideas for overcoming blocks when writing, and has really helped me get more words out. Plus it makes concrete that rewriting often means retyping rather than rearranging words on the page.

[Jackson Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sweet, bright and anxious Peter Elbow. This is not the most technically practical book, but it is so smart and real. A contradictory book about contradictions that will undoubtedly make me a better teacher. I’ll be playing the believing game.

[Safiyah Razzak · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess it taught me a lot on how to write well.

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the greats!! Still use it today!

[Nic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some very thought provoking ideas on writing and forming writing groups. It was quite theoretical and heavy going in places but certainly a different take on how to improve your writing.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books to help me on my writing journey.

[Pat · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the sentence level, it's dated.

At every other level, it's the best.