Read Like a Fool: by James Black

My day job involves, among many other duties, directing the writing center at the university where I work. One of my greatest challenges in that area is training and supervising the college students who serve as writing tutors. They’re intelligent and skilled writers themselves, but to effectively help other writers requires that they acknowledge the limits of what they know and remain open to learning from the writers they’ve been hired to help, to intentionally facilitate the development of a writer’s process without controlling it.

I remember first learning to do this when I started tutoring a million or so years ago. As is common in writing tutor training, I was encouraged not to play expert. A tutor doesn’t necessarily have vast knowledge of particular subject matter or even of writing as a discipline. If a tutor can claim to have some kind of expertise, it is as a reader-responder. Indeed, we’re good first responders, capable and willing to dig through the disaster of an early draft.

One of the best practices in writing center work is to use a “non-directive” approach. The purpose is not to avoid giving direction or advice but, rather, to practice a kind of stealth when responding to a writer. According to the non-directive model, a tutor’s work centers on discussion that will help the writer read as not-the-writer and to discover ideas rather than expecting them to be offered. It’s not very showy work. When a tutor is doing her job well, she may not leave a mark on the piece of writing–literally or figuratively. The writer may feel a strange mix of appreciation for the tutor’s presence but doubt that the tutor has done anything (the tutor often feels the latter as well). That’s okay. Something transcendent may happen in that conversation, but if the writer doesn’t own it, what’s the point?

While the common criticism is that “non-directive” suggests aimlessness, my mentor’s interpretation was simply not to give direction until the writer engaged with the process. She would “play the fool” in the Shakespearean sense, nudging the writer with probing questions and frank observations about the draft. She struck a helpful balance of humor and honesty, driven by her sincere interest in what the writer wanted to accomplish in the next draft. Without fail, she found something interesting she wanted to know more about. It was the writer’s responsibility to do the work, and it was her responsibility to let the writer do it.

Applying these ideas outside the writing center is tricky. As a writer, you probably have difficulty acknowledging the limits of what you know when you’re playing the role of reader–of your own work or others’. It’s not necessarily subject matter the you’re presumptuous about as writer-reader. Shifting into the role of reader requires not having control over the decisions that made the piece of writing what it is. What’s useful to the writer is a response that honors the piece in its current state. As a bonus, it might help the writer to discuss her/his intentions and how effectively the writing achieves those goals. But if you start telling the writer what s/he should do next, or offer ideas you think might be even better, you need to back away from the draft as soon as possible and do some relaxation exercises.

If you happen to be reading your own writing, all of this is true, although the process might work a bit more seamlessly. Just be careful not to ignore the seams between reader-you and writer-you. It’s important to treat yourself to reading your own work as a reader, taking the time and energy to respond in writing. As your own reader you get to leave a mark on your work only because it’s already your work. You’ve always owned it. That’s the point.

James Black is a founding member of Book Writing World. He earned a masters degree in comparative literature at the University of Missouri at Columbia. His work has been published in the anthology The New Queer Aesthetic on Television and in the journal Anon. He’s writing his first novel about the family of a closeted, gay soldier stationed in Iraq. Check out his blog, Quota. He contributes to the BWW weekly!