The Amazing Mr. Elbow

Mr. Elbow, my friend, I see you have returned. We are all blessed to have you in our hands again. Like a noble sage, Elbow starts the chapter with some amazing food for thought, “To improve your writing you don’t need advice about what changes to make; you don’t need theories of what is good and bad writing. You need movies of people’s minds while they read your words.” Elbow’s concept of a teacherless writing class is an interesting idea. I’m sure that everyone does not receive it with open arms, but I like it. As educators, we can apply this to the classroom by breaking our students into groups to allow them to experience this. If we are able to gather a better understanding of how we are being perceived, we may in fact become more aware of our own writing. This should not be hard to understand. For instance, who can think of a time when you were out with a group of people and you stated something in pure innocence but you received an awkward glance from someone? It’s true; the statement did not contain even the slightest bit of racism, rudeness, or neglect. But somehow, one person took it out of context. We must realize this, and teach this to our students (not necessarily from an offensive standpoint, but as a illustration of confusion). As writers, we can easily forget our audience. If we are addressing a specific crowd that does not mean that we should ostracize everyone else. Elbow’s teacherless environment addresses just this issue. Elbow states in the “Class Time” section of the chapter that we should “find a regular time and stick to it. Otherwise you are asking for trouble.” This is a good idea, but I think that we should rotate our audience, because if we grow too comfortable with several others, they may develop that bizarre (tongue in cheek) mental telepathy that ultimately results in the completion of each other’s sentences. This is problematic. Our audience, regardless of who is reading it, should understand the “movies” we are constructing.