SQR 6

My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument For Ignoring Audience

Summary

Throughout the article Peter Elbow claims that “writer-based prose can be better than reader-based prose”(53). He talks about two kinds of audiences: inviting/enabling (writers think about the audience and they think better things to say) and inhibiting (audience that make writers feel dumb when they try to speak to them). Therefore when writers are aware of the audience as they write, it may disturb or disrupt their thinking. The author suggest to the inexpert writers to ignore audience during the early stages of their writing, and assess the readers’ needs during revision “ignoring audience can lead to worse drafts but better revisions”(53). Ignoring the audience would lead writers to explore their thoughts and discover their own ideas as they write to themselves. The author states that learning to be aware of when to turn off the audience would lead to better writings. He also mentions that ignoring audience can help writers to generate a stronger voice for their writings.

In the article the author suggest for the teachers to teach their students to write in the desert island mode (private writing). In order for the teachers to help the students, they need to be a private audience to the students, by trusting and believing in their writing.

Question #4

In p. 53, the author concludes that, “it’s often difficult to work out new meaning while thinking about the readers”. Do you agree with this argument? Please explain.

Yes, we concur with the author’s conclusion. It is difficult as a writer to explore our thoughts and discover new ideas about a certain topic while we are focused on assessing readers’ needs. It’s complicated for us writers to be thinking about the readers’ interpretation of a meaning that we the writers haven’t even figured out yet ourselves. We believe that in order to begin to construct a good concept we need to not think about the readers’ needs at first. Especially the inhibiting audience, which are the ones that make us feel dumb and shut us down.  Therefore, it’s important for us writers to be aware if the audience we have would help us as we write or if the audience would hurt us by confusing us when we write. When we begin to write we need to just write what we feel and use our own opinions on the topic we are writing about, without worrying about the audience.

This does not mean that we won’t assess the readers’ needs. It’s just that first we have to figure out our own concept about the topic we are writing about. And once we have discovered our concept, then as we revise it we will assess the readers’ needs. (making use of rhetorical writing strategies)