Peter Elbow isolates the act of writing in his arguments, claiming that the best way to write is to do it away from the constructs of academia, society, and the pressures of an audience. For him, it is an act to itself; it is personal, insightful, and one meant to be done without heavy reliance on external forces.
Janet Emig posits that writing is “integrative” and “involves the fullest possible functioning of the brain.” She lays the claim for looking at writing as the fullest act of knowledge; it is the unifying of all aspects of the brain into one single expression of thought processes.
I think, at first glance, it seems like Elbow would not be in agreement with Emig; based on a brief look at her argument, he would be disinterested in the idea of writing as a listening act because he doesn’t want writers to listen too closely to the voices going on outside of the paper, but I think when looking closely at what it is she is saying about that act of listening, we see that she is instead simply building from his argument of the solitary essay. Yes, writing is a listening act, according to Emig. However, the listening is done within the paper itself. When something is written, Emig sees this as immediate feedback; so, when you type out a sentence, you have the opportunity to listen back to yourself. You can develop and grow from that sentence by using all the parts of your brain to create a knowledgeable paper. Reading that paper in itself is the act of listening and responding.