Whoa. This blew my mind (from Elbow’s writer vs. academic pg 73):
(1) Sometimes I’ve felt a conflict about what we should read in the first year writing course. It would seem as though in order to help students see themselves as academics I should get them to read “key texts”: good published writing, important works of cultural or literary significance; strong and important works. However if I want them to see themselves as writers, we should primarily publish and read their own writing.
I’ve never even considered this. It’s a weird idea to think of telling students that rather than learning from “the greats”, we are going to be reading their own work, making them “the greats” in their own way. This idea of belonging to a community of writers is pretty cool. There is inherent pride and accomplishment in publishing work. I wonder how much more of a confident writer I might be now if I had had teachers who really pushed me to publish something I wrote: to communicate, by publishing it, that my writing has value and should be shared. I think it took me years to even consider the idea, and I’m only just beginning to put my eggs in that basket and run with it (hence the MFA program, to which I only applied because loved ones really encouraged me to and told me they enjoyed reading what I wrote. That hadn’t occurred to me before.)
I also loved the dialogue about not knowing something if you can’t say it on pg. 77. I’d really like to lean into this as a writer in the same way Elbow mentions he did. To consider that if I feel I can’t articulate something the way I want to, it doesn’t make me stupid or ignorant or “not knowing” the topic. It just means that I’m ready to take on the challenge of trying to write about it or put it into words. And when you take on that challenge, you become a writer.