Writing = Improv?

I’ve wanted to teach writing for a long time and have had many visions of talks about craft and argumentation and inspiring college students to value their words. But when I dreamed of my future classrooms, one thing I didn’t picture was that my first full year of teaching would be completely asynchronous due to a global pandemic. We all felt how the pandemic completely uprooted every system we have in place and made us question the way we’ve always done things—could this job be done from home? Could we get these books delivered? What does teaching look like when it’s not safe to put all of our students in the same room?

While I'm grateful that higher education has largely returned to meeting in person, I do think that remote teaching gave me an opportunity to not get stuck in “the way we’ve always done things” when it comes to teaching writing. As a white woman with a traditional academic background, it would have been easy for me to recreate the same process-oriented models of teaching writing that were given to me. My classrooms would have been discussion based but formulaic—“Let’s talk about what makes a good thesis statement. Write a rough draft and bring it in for peer review.” I would have understood that these models don’t work for every student, but I would have been unable to conceive of how to uproot the writing process I had been taught. Teaching asynchronously, where the pedagogical models I knew were nearly impossible, I was forced to rethink how we create writing knowledge with students and share that knowledge to students.

At the same time, I encountered the book Situating Writing Processes by Hannah J. Rule, a book that argues for the need to place a writer and the writer’s process within their specific situation, place, time, and context. The book emerges out of the tension between process theory and post-process theory in composition studies. Writing pedagogy is shaped by the existence of a writing process, by the fact that there are certain moves we must make to write well. Yet, as scholars have agreed for decades, the writing process cannot be codified into a specific set of rules. Can writing even be taught? If pedagogy is dependent on the existence of process, but every writer’s process is dependent on their individual context, does writing pedagogy exist at all? These questions feel particularly relevant in pandemic and post-pandemic times, as we’re questioning the merits of many systems, both in and out of academia.

Situating Writing Processes seeks to thread this needle between process and post-process discussions in composition theory in order to see the writing process as “always and differently physically emplaced and context-contingent” (4). When we discuss writing, as Rule says, we often only consider the noun—the finished product, the drafts and outlines we produce—and we do not consider the verb—the physical labor that happens in space and time. Post-process theorists have agreed for years that composition theory should consider writing as an emplaced activity, but Rule argues that in calling for a break from codified process models, post-process theorists have placed a moratorium on discussing process at all. And perhaps, particularly for writing instructors, we could use a new, balanced perspective on how process can be decentered and useful in our classrooms. Rule states her goal as such: “countering the ways historically that process theories have seemed to overlook bodies and writing objects, I work in these pages toward situating writing processes” (5). Rule seeks to sit in the tensions between process theory and post-process theory, to select instructional processes from both theories and let them coexist, allowing students to create their own knowledge about writing well within their specific situations.

The book is useful for any writing instructor who wishes to reconceptualize and deconstruct how writing instruction happens in and out of a classroom. For me, the book served as a launching pad into researching more instructional practices that live in the tensions between theories and disciplines—I’ve dug more into the overlaps between creative writing and rhetoric/composition pedagogy, the overlaps between personal expression and critical discourse, and have questioned what makes writing “academic.” My goal here is to share some of Rule's core arguments and apply them to my own limited experiences with college writing classrooms.

1. Writing is a physical activity happening in real time. Rule argues that we should see writing “as activity, as physical, and as materially emplaced” by “exposing and adjusting assumptions around process” (73). Many organizations, such as the Council of Writing Program Administrators, the National Council of Teachers of English, and National Writing Project, describe the writing process as context dependent. Meaning, writing is always informed by a person's individual lived experiences. However, describing the writing process as a set of personal strategies, implying that writing is always owned and controlled by the writer alone, disregards the specific situations in which our students write. This view of the writer-as-owner of the process is problematic for instructors who seek to build an inclusive classroom. If we agree that all students are influenced and implicated by their socioeconomic, cultural, and body context, as well as dependent on the physical location in which they write, then we must agree that process, especially in the classroom, is more than just a set of strategies for a student to wield at will. Rule says, “strategies imply that ‘our’ processes are separable from where, with what, and with whom they are. But processes are never just a writer’s plans; they are an amalgamation of ranging, distributed, shaping and participatory forces which include the writer” (76). Consider how unproductive many of us feel when significant events are happening in the world--the pandemic, the civil rights actions of summer 2020, the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, or the current genocide in Palestine--do our process strategies account for writing that happens while we are being affected by current events? How does our process change when we’re trying to call bodies to action in the street? Can we really control our process while caring for our tender bodies and minds as they respond to events outside of our control? A writer must adapt; process is susceptible to the constraints of the situation and the writer. Therefore, process is an activity happening in real time, dependent on a physical body, and we should treat it as such when teaching it to students. In doing so, we invite students to contribute to the activity of writing, to see writing as more than just a cognitive act, and invites students "not to practice what they 'know' but to practice figuring out how to proceed" (104). The practice of figuring it out and teaching students to do the same is something that does not sit comfortably with me as an academic, but is one that I think is one of Rule’s most crucial points. If a student understands that process is fluid and context dependent, perhaps they would take that understanding into other writing situations.
   

2. Students need to see writing, not just think about it. I have borrowed one of Rule's in-class activities, where I ask students at the beginning of the semester to draw what they think of when I say "the writing process." I then ask for volunteers to hold up and describe their drawings. Most students draw a person at a desk, either in front of a computer or with a pen and paper, sometimes with headphones on. Some draw a series of images to indicate prewriting, drafting, and revising. A few will add a clock to show an incoming deadline. The most common theme I see, though, is that students will draw a solitary person sitting at a desk. I will then ask questions like "how many of you have roommates or live with family?" "Do any of you ever write on the couch in front of the TV?" "What snacks do you like to have on hand while writing?" Through this activity, students are invited to visualize, interrogate, and complicate their assumptions about what writing should look like. If we were transparent with students about the messiness of writing, showed them the ways we try and fail and write in between bites of a cold stir fry while our partner makes too much noise putting up a shelf, perhaps students would see and locate writing in their own lives and practice it authentically, in a way that sticks. I think I use the phrase "rhetorical situation" at least once a day in my classrooms because I want students to see and respond to the many situations in which they exist while writing--the environment in which they write, the tools they might need, the time they have, and the genre in which they've been asked to write. Rule describes other observational activities that instructors can use, such as asking students to take notes outside class any time they see writing in action. When students see that emails, text messages, social media posts, and notes for other classes as another form of writing, they see how the activity of writing changes depending on the context. She cautions the use of too many reflective practices, such as journals, as that can turn students too far inward and cause them to forget their larger contexts as they do so. We want students to be co-creators of their own knowledge and figure out a process that works for them, but we also want them to keep the situatedness of writing in mind.
   

3. Writing instructors can learn from improv pedagogy. Many of us are familiar with the phrase "yes, and" as the number one rule for improv comedy. When someone sets up a scenario for an improv scene, the rest of the players must accept it and contribute additions rather than saying no and changing the scenario. Improv comedy also responds to its audiences by asking the audience to contribute details. Similarly, if we accept that writing is situated, we accept that writing is dependent on its current contexts and must respond to its rhetorical situation, its physical location, and the body enacting it in the moment. Writing must respond to unpredictable constraints and a measure of uncertainty, and writing must respond to its audience’s expectations. Therefore, writing is improv, and it can be useful to treat it as such, because thinking of writing as improvisational can help students transfer their skills across contexts. In my graduate school courses on pedagogy, a common concern among writing scholars is transfer, or the ability for students to take what they've learned in a course and apply those skills to a new situation. This is understandable, of course--did we really do our job as instructors if a student immediately forgets what they've learned in a class? A situated vision of pedagogy calls for us to embrace the uncertainty of writing, and teaching writing as situated, uncertain, context-dependent, and, therefore, improvisational can help students write and see process across contexts. Improv practice involves many group conversations in which players assess their own progress, guided by questions from the instructor. Since improv is so dependent on the situation and the audience, an improv teacher cannot possibly provide strategies and knowledge for a player to employ. Instead, the players are called to see their performance and progress themselves, paying attention to their bodies in space and the response from the audience. Writing teachers can borrow this methodology. By understanding that we cannot possibly provide strategies for a student to use in every rhetorical situation, we can instead guide students to observe the situation and their place within it and effectively respond to the situation. They can then carry those observational skills to new writing situations without our guidance.

If we want to teach writing in a contemporary world and deconstruct old-fashioned ideas about writing, we must understand that writing takes place not just in a student’s mind, but in their body, in a physical place, with the materials at hand, and in response to the writer’s sociocultural context. We need to design our writing activities as ones where students are co-creators in their knowledge-making, where students are able to observe process unfolding, and where students have space and time to get lost, play around, and arrive at their own discoveries about writing and inquiry. This book was a catalyst for me, prompting me to explore writing pedagogy in composition studies, creative writing, and writing center frameworks. I have knowledge to share with students, but I also get to create a physical and intellectual space for them to show up with their whole contexts. I get to take nuggets and wisdom from scholars before me and offer it to students to see for themselves, and I get to create a space for students to practice writing for themselves. I don’t have to stick with prescriptive strategies or only pick one lane in situating writing processes. Instead I get to practice figuring it out.

Works Cited

Rule, Hannah J. Situating Writing Processes. The WAC Clearinghouse; University of Colorado Press, 2019.