Suggests that, although the benefits of word processing are widely acknowledged, writing is still perceived as a difficult activity. Considers the degree to which particular features of word processing might constitute new and significant impediments to individual writers. Discusses this issue with writers who expressed concerns that their…

Outlines the author's experience publishing a collection of short stories. Discusses the hopes and disappointments of the process. Notes that persistence and fortitude are required for publishing a book. (PM)

Suggests, in the context of the author's publishing failures and successes, ways to cope with the fact that judgment and rejection are part of academic publishing. (SR)

Reviews feminist critiques of philosophy and science, and suggests how they may relate to attitudes about the teaching of writing found among academics--humanists as well as scientists--and to the teaching of writing in colleges and universities. Suggests that taking notice of this material will help bring writing courses closer to what takes…

Explores the ways students experience contemporary writing pedagogy. Ranges from rhetoric's historical discussion of the pleasures of writing to composition's more recent interest in academic professionalism to Gilles Deleuze's theory of masochism to the problem of teaching and learning in a consumer culture. (SG)

Writing instructors who would like to move beyond the collaboration provided by workshops and peer-response groups might consider asking groups of students to write a collage together. According to Peter Elbow, a collage "consists not of a single perfectly connected train of explicit thinking or narrative but rather of fragments: arranged how…

Notes that because creative nonfiction exists at the boundary between fiction and nonfiction, reality and recreations of reality, and emotional and factual truth, it raises vexing issues. Discusses what carries more weight: the responsibility to a participant in a story or to the larger story of which she is an important part. Wonders if telling…

Describes a 1988 article entitled "Composing as a Woman" as an attempt to reconcile feminist inquiry and composition studies and to persuade composition specialists that the feminist view has a bearing on their field. Explains that a study of the relationship between gender and reading produced a new perspective on student papers. (SG)

Describes a series of studies of both student and professional writers. Concludes that writers' emotions change discernibly when they compose. Finds intensified positive emotions (such as excitement and happiness), weakened negative-passive emotions (shame and boredom), and less variable negative-active emotions (including fear and anger). (SG)

Finds that case assignments used in a college business composition course generally produced more effective writing products than did traditional model assignments. Suggests that the writing processes and attitudes involved in the case assignments were highly sensitive to audience and context, whereas those involved in the traditional assignments…

Examines how a writing class can help students to critically examine what or who they are identifying with or imitating. Suggests that reading can disrupt limiting, dualistic attachments and set into motion a process of remodeling, of addressing the restlessness experienced when one person tries to be like another. Considers why compositionists…

Describes a first-year composition sequence of assignments using the topic of family to allow students to write essays based on their own experiences. Notes that the sequence eventually requires that students also address connected ideas and then reflect on the convergence of the personal and analytical. (PRA)

Discusses why recent studies of word processing offer contradicting results about computer-assisted revision. Examines how writers' cognitive processes for revision are affected by word processing. Finds that (1) experienced writers define revision to include more global-level changes, whereas students tend to focus on local-level concerns; and…

Asserts that composition studies should include the study of emotion. Focuses on the piece of social psychology from which "attitude" emerges as a core concept and came to share with "emotion" a common phenomenological base. Discusses the rise of social psychology and the construct of attitude, cognitive studies and social…

Discusses the problems of motivating students and teaching persuasive writing. Outlines cultural assumptions about argumentation, the ideas of Jurgen Habermas and the Frankfurt School, Habermas' theory of communication, and its pedagogical implications. (PRA)