{"id":6299,"date":"2016-01-25T15:28:34","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T20:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/?p=6299"},"modified":"2022-03-28T10:04:14","modified_gmt":"2022-03-28T15:04:14","slug":"how-we-actually-write-neurodiversity-writing-process-and-writing-instruction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dept.writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/how-we-actually-write-neurodiversity-writing-process-and-writing-instruction\/","title":{"rendered":"How We [Actually] Write: Neurodiversity, Writing Process, and Writing Instruction"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

\"Leah<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

By Leah Pope<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Leah Pope has been a Writing Center tutor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since fall of 2014. She is also a PhD candidate in English literary studies, writing a dissertation that explores representations of disability and bodily difference in Anglo-Saxon England.<\/i><\/p>\n

Alexandra Gillespie<\/span> opens her essay in How We Write: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blank Page<\/a> <\/i>by confessing that she only writes when she has to [1]. \u201cBecause reasons\u201d (19). She writes this casually, as if she\u2019s not breaking my mind by using Internet diction. But it\u2019s not just her delightful, playful writing style \u2014 shared by many of the essays in this collection \u2014 that is revealing. Gillespie describes anxious and determined binge writing, fueled by deadlines ranging from a DPhil advisor\u2019s note asking to have coffee \u2014 how terrifying! \u2014 to a paper promised to a friend\/colleague for review. She describes writing 6,000 words in one day to meet a deadline \u2014 not drivel, mind you, but a conference paper and later the core of a book chapter.<\/span><\/p>\n

My own writing process seems tame and much less exciting by comparison: I sit down; I type. Sometimes I need to doodle diagrams of ideas on a large piece of paper, or, in dire cases, on windows and mirrors in a dry-erase marker. A sentence or two will flow beautifully \u2014 the ones I have been turning over in my head while I fall asleep. But my academic career is not built on tweets (though if it were I might be closer to the coveted claim of \u201cDigital Humanities\u201d expertise), so I need to write more. Sometimes whole paragraphs at a time flow through my hands to the keyboard. Sometimes I write half a sentence here and there, framing in brackets things to write on a later day when my brain feels less like butternut squash. Sometimes the most interesting part of an essay comes to me when I am not actively writing at all, and gets copied and pasted out of an email I hastily type to myself using the WiFi at City Bar (a local establishment frequented by many a UW-Madison grad student). In these writing habits I am not always a good role model, but for now, these habits are functional enough for me and the way my brain works.<\/span><\/p>\n

My goal in this blog post is to share some thoughts about neurodiversity as a surprisingly underutilized concept in writing instruction, and its potential implications for thinking about the writing strategies we teach and model for students. Anyone working on long-term writing projects can benefit from thinking about different approaches to the writing process. And anyone teaching or tutoring writers who seek advice on the writing process can benefit from hearing about the variety of possible approaches, so they can recommend more than solely their own approach.<\/span><\/p>\n

Diverse Writers, Diverse Writing Processes <\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

\"The<\/a>How We Write: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blank Page<\/i>, published last year by Punctum Books, <\/i>began last May as a pair of blog posts: a PhD candidate\u2019s thoughts following a roundtable on dissertation writing <\/a>and the response that followed from a pair of tenured faculty<\/a>. A flurry of online conversation ensued and within two months of the initial roundtable, the collection was coming together in its edited form. In September, my own printed copy arrived on my doorstep [2].<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

How We Write<\/i> offers thirteen essays by academics at all levels describing their writing processes with blunt honesty. Since reading it, I have been increasingly self-conscious about the secrecy we (academics, grad students, Writing Center tutors) often keep around our personal writing processes, as if we feel a kind of shame around what is working (or isn\u2019t working) for us. We become very familiar with a few strategies \u2014 daily\/scheduled writing, pomodoros, shitty first drafts \u2014 that show up again and again in composition classes and writing workshops, but outside of our own habits, we often hear very little about the more creative practices our colleagues have developed for their writing. And because our exposure to various approaches is limited, our students are unlikely to hear about the wide variety of writing processes that actually do work for a great many writing tutors who are themselves writers.<\/span><\/p>\n

The narrative we spin through the mainstream writing processes we learn and teach is not always an accessible one. As Rick Godden\u2019s essay in How We Write <\/i>demonstrates, not all of us have the option of following a model of daily writing or scheduled writing periods. Physical realities make highly regimented writing rituals impractical, even impossible, for Godden, as well as a not insignificant number of our colleagues and students. <\/b>Preferring or needing to use dictation or screen-reading software in order to write might mean that recommendations about drafting or revision practices sometimes simply won\u2019t work or will be excessively time-consuming within that physical reality. Such diverse groups of writers \u2014 at the undergraduate, graduate, even professional academic level \u2014 are often left on their own to sort out an effective writing process, frequently without resources like the standard Writing Center conference, which does not easily accommodate accessibility software.<\/span><\/p>\n

The physical realities of somatic diversity are mirrored in the often invisible realities of neurodiversity<\/a>. A term coined only in the late 1990s, neurodiversity describes the variability of mental processes across different human minds. It is perhaps most prominent in the movement to recognize autism as a difference, even a benefit in some ways, rather than as a deficit. But neurodiversity can also include many psychological realities that a great many writers live and cope with: dyslexia, anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD, etc. These realities impact our writing processes and <\/i>perhaps should impact the way we teach writing processes.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShould\u201d-ing All Over Ourselves<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n
\"A<\/a>
Dr. Paul Silvia of UNC-Greensboro speaks to Writing Center tutors in April 2013.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I would suggest that writing is always a neurodiverse process. Regardless of label-happy diagnoses, one \u201cnormal\u201d writer, if there is such a thing, will always be different in some way than another \u201cnormal\u201d writer. We already acknowledge this with matters of timing: I am a morning writer, but that is considered no better or worse than my friend who writes best in the middle of the night. The logic behind accepting and encouraging our students to explore writing at different times of day (in different settings, in different media, etc) could be extended to make advice about writing processes more accessible to a more diverse range of students. No one (to my knowledge) is saying that having difficulty following one writing process or another makes a student a bad or ineffective writer, but I don\u2019t believe we are saying often enough that there are endless possible ways to write by which a person can be an effective writer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Paul Silvia, in How to Write a Lot <\/i>(APA, 2007), advocates for scheduled writing as a nearly universal solution to unproductive writing habits. He cites anecdotes and empirical studies, making a very compelling argument for why sitting down to write regularly will produce more new ideas and simply more words than only writing when one feels like it. His data suggests that this is true across averages. But we are doing a disservice to our students, our colleagues, and ourselves if we expect an average to mean everyone should<\/i> be able to write that way. In addition to neuro- and physical diversity complicating the way any of us goes about writing, many of our students\u2019 writing habits are complicated by work schedules (often a matter of socio-economic background), other courses (a matter of how different disciplines are socially and institutionally prioritized), and career expectations (which can be gendered and racialized through how much extracurricular\/volunteer work is encouraged). No one approach to writing is going to be best \u2014 most efficient, most effective, most personally healthy \u2014 for every writer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
For some, it can be valuable to always feel that one should be writing. For others, that pressure can be prohibitively stress-inducing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Scheduled writing may not actually be best for everyone, even if the numbers suggest it will be better for most writers. At the graduate and faculty level, the culture of academia widely demands almost constant writing, as is satirized by the Twitter and Facebook phenomenon Shit Academics Say.\u00a0<\/span>Such pressures almost certainly provide the encouragement that some writers need to get their work done, but when felt as a professional mandate, it just as certainly creates an unhealthy psychological environment for many other academics. Among graduate students (not uncoincidentally, the group that furnishes Writing Center tutors at UW-Madison), it is not difficult to find anecdotes about anxiety and panic attacks prompted by feeling that one should be writing more, better, and more often. Perhaps we would be happier, healthier, even more productive writers ourselves if we could become more willing to discuss our real and realistic writing habits openly with each other, to show each other not only that it is not mandatory to follow a single, narrow path to find success in academic writing, but also that there are a lot of creative options out there that are worth trying. <\/span><\/p>\n

Writing instruction should likewise be informed by neurodiversity. When we make choices about syntax and diction, when we think about tailoring to our audience, we are attempting to communicate the ideas in our unique minds to a particular set of other unique minds. We are attempting to bridge the diversity of neural experience. Talking about neurodiverse needs and practices when it comes to the act of writing not only has the potential to create writers more attentive to their audience, but could also create a world more accepting of neurodiversity in other realms, such as conversational comfort zones, needs for more or less personal\/social time, and different responses to kairotic spaces<\/a> such as department receptions and office hours [3].<\/span> If we encourage our students to explore the writing practice that works best for their unique self without shaming unconventional processes, then we are also inviting them to seek support without embarrassment if their writing habits aren\u2019t working \u2014 and we are declaring ourselves a safe resource for students who find themselves in any crisis affecting their schoolwork.<\/span><\/p>\n

How We Write: Alone and Together<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

Suzanne Conklin Akbari opens her introduction to How We Write<\/i> as follows: \u201cWhen we write, we write alone. Being alone means control, productive solitude, introspective bliss; it also means loneliness, isolation, even fear\u201d (xiii). I\u2019ve heard it said on numerous occasions that anyone writing a dissertation needs a therapist. This is still probably true, but I suspect it\u2019s more accurate to say that anyone who is writing at all needs someone they can talk to. This is a need Writing Centers can meet. By talking more to each other about our actual writing habits, as instructors, tutors, and frequent (or infrequent \u2014 whatever works for you!) academic writers, we can become better equipped to talk to our students about the diversity of writing practices that can<\/i> and do<\/i> work for different people.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Pets can be remarkably good audiences for bouncing ideas around.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For three months this fall and winter, I did not write alone. A cockatiel, Petey, would sit on the back of my chair, chew up sticky notes on my desk, or hop up to me on the couch and duck her head to ask me to scratch the back of her neck. She would leave little presents on drafts I set out to return to later. An earlier version of this blog post opened with a description of how her frequent distractions made me more productive by keeping me away from the endless vortex of the Internet. She passed away last week.<\/span><\/p>\n

I mention this because, if we are being perfectly honest, my mind is in a different place now as I revise than it was when I first drafted this essay. My ability to research my dissertation \u2014 which is in fact very much about death \u2014 is in a different place. This is not exactly neurodiversity or somatic diversity; this is the diversity that is life (though really, isn\u2019t all diversity just\u2026 life?). Our experiences define us even as they define our writing, and my sadness is changing the way I write. It would have felt dishonest to edit Petey out of this essay completely, because I know I\u2019m not the only academic writer out there who has been stalled by the emotional experiences of their personal life. <\/span><\/p>\n

I believe it would be good for us \u2014 as academics, but especially as Writing Center tutors and administrators at UW-Madison, around the country, and around the world \u2014 to talk more honestly about how we actually write. By sharing our psychological experiences of writing, we might just\u00a0find our way toward happier, healthier, and more productive writing. Though it is not the only place this conversation should occur, I would offer the comments section below as a venue for sharing about our writing processes. How do you actually write? Do you tell your students the truth about your writing habits? And what\u2019s the worst (or best) that could happen if you did?<\/span><\/p>\n

Notes<\/span><\/h2>\n

[1]\u00a0Try to understand my perspective on Alexandra Gillespie by imagining a scholar teaching at a university renowned for your field<\/i>, who has published seemingly endless brilliant articles and books that you have cited repeatedly<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

[2]\u00a0Though I preferred to order the very reasonably priced print edition for myself, Punctum Books also offers How We Write<\/i> free for download as a PDF.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

[3] Margaret Price defines kairotic spaces in Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life <\/i>as \u201cthe less formal, often unnoticed, areas of academe where knowledge is produced and power is exchanged\u201d (60); in other words, spaces in which professional or academic success are contingent upon appropriate, often ostensibly casual, interpersonal interactions. The kairotic space of the writing conference calls for a blog post and conversation of its own.<\/span><\/p>\n

References<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n

Akbari, Suzanne Conklin, ed. How We Write: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blank Page.<\/i> Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books, 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n

Silvia, Paul. How to Write a Lot<\/i>. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2007.<\/span><\/p>\n

Price, Margaret. Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life<\/i>. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2011.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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