By Beth Huetter
Here I am staring at my computer, trying to shake off a major blow to my writer’s ego in order to write this paper. I have been sitting here, hands folded, resting under my chin, I suppose for a while now, trying to regain enough confidence, flair, or drive even to put my fingers back onto the keyboard and keep writing.
This is a problem I have seen in many other students. They are afraid to write because of the consequences their writing will have. To them, a poor grade on their paper is a reflection of themselves. Even for native speakers, writing is a foreign thing that they have no control over, they are at the will of the words. They are trapped by something they do in fact have control over, they just don’t know how to control it.
I have been having my papers shot down for years, and every time I have had to find the courage to start writing again. Despite all this rejection, over the years I have become more confident in my writing; I might even venture so far to say that I am a good writer. But I still suffer from writing anxiety from time to time. It’s not writer’s block, although it can come out in that way sometimes. It’s more a matter of ownership over the writing; having the strength to own the words. The dilemma you face as a writer is over the ability to make words your own, and conversely having the strength to also let your writing go and not let criticism, or flat out rejection, get to you and keep you from writing more.
It was hard enough for me to come to grips with the idea that I owned my writing, that the writing does not own me. So many nights as a youngster I spent feeling betrayed by my mother for finding something wrong with my essay after I had given it to validate, and then she would have the audacity to correct it! Even if it was an apostrophe in ‘its’ when there wasn’t supposed to be, I was mortified. My mother despised me! I was a horrible person! Fortunately I overcame this, and now when somebody gives me a bad review on my writing, I can take it in stride. Mostly.
Some people may not realize what a big deal this is. But I see it affect a great majority of the students I have tutored this quarter. Tutor Emily Murai spoke of her own experience with this problem in her essay “Tutoring Consciousness.” She wrote an article for a campus newspaper, thinking that nobody would know it was her. When the article was printed with her name on it, she was so embarrassed it took her almost her entire four years here at UC Santa Cruz to work up the nerve to write publicly again. I don’t want that to happen to anyone ever again. The power to write and the ability to have power over your writing is one of the greatest things to possess.
Of course, if I’m going to save the world‘s writers from their own doubt, I have to pin down what I’m fighting against. Above all, this fear of one’s own writing has to do with a lack of confidence, and the disability of the writer to detach himself from his writing and look at it from a critical thing, and not as a piece of art or some mystical thing he has created and must not be disturbed.
The best example I have of this problem among my tutees is Nicole. Nicole is a decent writer, but has such a lack of confidence in her writing that she will hand her papers to her roommates, her little brother even, in hopes of them finding whatever is ‘wrong’ with her work and fixing it for her. She wants as little to do with the writing process as possible. She has told me repeatedly that she just “doesn’t get writing.” For her the greatest challenge is just owning her work, feeling like what she put down on paper is hers to mold and shape and change, that she has control over her words.
Like Nicole, a lot of students just don’t think that their voice matters. They think that a teacher is looking for something academic sounding, and therefore their papers will come out sounding like a textbook, or something trying to pretend to be a textbook. They think that their voices sound juvenile, like an amateur’s, when in fact their voice is what the teacher wants to hear. Papers without a voice, without a soul, are boring to read, and even more boring to write. Another student I had, Leah, would apologize in her paper for having an opinion at all, for placing any thought that was her own into the paper. Yet it is hard to convince students that they can write any other way and still get an A.
Virginia Draper talks about this fear of speaking to a public in her article “Writer’s Block and Writing Apprehension.” She mostly focuses on writer’s block, but some things are very applicable to the problem of writer ownership. She too notices the lack of confidence that some students have, “…you may find that [your student] wrongly believes he lacks some skills or knowledge that he is sure everyone else in the class possesses” (Draper, 1993).
I think that another great challenge for a lot of students is to not look at their writing like it is a piece of art that must not be touched. In grade school I learned that in order to write a poem you must be inspired by some muse, some sort of inspiration, and must get it right the first time. If you change it, it is a different poem all together. Some people write their papers with this same mindset. Linda Flower calls this style “Perfect Draft” writing in her article “Understanding Your Own Writing Process.” A person will write a paper in one sitting, painstakingly correcting as they go, and will not want to change hardly anything about it once it is done. In their eyes it is as good as it is going to get. In truth I know a lot of people who write like this, and it is a hard pattern to break. I hated doing outlines and bubble-graphing in grade school, so I would just write the essay in one sitting. It was only later that I learned that there are many other styles available to use in order to turn out a good paper.
A lot of this doubt a person feels about their writing can come from outside sources, not just a lack of self-esteem. Some do not come from environments that promote writing and being a critical thinker about your own work. My mother was my first editor, but she was always very supportive of my work. Most writers are not so lucky. These students have been so beaten down by their struggles with writing, their teachers, or maybe even their parents and peers, they no longer believe in their ability to write. If the topic they’re supposed to write about is on something they fear or attach bad memories to, it will not be easy for them to talk about it. For example, in her article, Draper (1993) says,
- “In addition, students who are survivors of sexual or emotional abuse may experience difficulty writing when the very act of sitting down to write evokes scenes and stories that are not to be spoken. Similarly, students who have had to suppress their life experiences, concerns, and desires because these are not acceptable to the university or society may experience debilitating shame when they are asked to write.”
Ellen Hart and Sarah Parmeter talk about students feeling out of place and therefore uncomfortable writing in their article “Writing in the Margins.” The class they taught focused on people who did not historically have a voice in writing, specifically gays and lesbians. They noticed that even when they tried to create a safe environment for students in the class, students would not feel safe in expressing their opinions in any writing that was to be graded, let alone identify themselves as homosexual or even bi-curious in their papers. Emily Murai spoke in her article of how since she felt her voice was a minority at UCSC she did not feel comfortable attaching her name to her article in the newspaper; she did not feel comfortable owning her work.
Murai, Draper, and Hart and Parmeter all speak of instances when feeling like an outsider kept people from writing good papers, or even writing at all. Another tutee I had, Kelly, was unable to look critically at a paper she wrote because she felt that instead of critiquing her writing the teacher was personally attacking her and the viewpoints she expressed in the paper; she too felt out of place in her writing because she felt in the minority. In fact, the teacher liked Kelly and generally praised her work; she simply had not found evidence in the paper to back up what Kelly was saying. It was helpful for Kelly to have me act as a third party judge, a sort of mediator, between the teacher and herself. I told Kelly that I would go through her paper with an open mind, trying to see her points and the teacher’s points as well. I pointed out to her some of the things she said that needed to have evidence to back up what she was saying, and we found some instances where she had misinterpreted the readings. When Kelly was able to take herself, or have me take her, out of the writing and look at it from a third party perspective and not feel like she was being personally attacked, she was able to transform her weak paper into a strong case.
It does seem to me that there are ways that we as tutors can act as third party mediators for our tutees, either between them and their teacher, or between them and their paper. We are also able to introduce to our tutees different writing styles that may help them own the work better, feel like they have control over what they are saying, besides just drawing outlines and bubbles on a sheet of paper. In the end what helped me, and Murai, was teacher’s feedback. Getting feedback from lots of teachers and their opinions on lots of different papers helped me a lot. Another thing that helped me was being forced to edit my own work, not try to detach myself from the writing process as quickly as possible. In one class I was assigned to be my own editor, go through my work and find what was wrong with it, not just being dependent on what the teacher thought of it. Being able to detach myself from my work and rewrite it, change it, destroy it entirely and make something new out of it helped me more than anything in gaining the confidence to own my words.
In the end, just taking control of your words, not leaving them up to other people to decide whether or not they are good, is what will make you a better writer. Taking that plunge to take your work, mash it up, and rework it into something new seems to be the only way to own your writing. It makes you more acquainted with your own words, and more able to let go of them when you need to. When you own your work you feel like you can put your own voice, your own thoughts into the work, and that makes it a good paper. Unfortunately writers will not believe that their voice even matters until they own their work. Sort of a Catch-22 thing. It is important that tutors and teachers encourage this idea of owning your writing, taking control of the essay and wrestling it to the floor until it does your bidding, not trying to haphazardly make words into something when you don’t know how to control them.
The moment when students start to own their own writing and are able to control what they are saying is awaiting them. I don’t know if it comes in one great epiphany or slowly over time, but it is out there, waiting for them. They just have to have the courage to go get it, and we as tutors can help them do that. When faced with possible death, Audre Lorde (1984) wrote “My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.” I hope everyone has a chance to realize and use that someday.
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