Re: In Defense of North

[Nick Carbone <ncarbone@lamar.ColoState.EDU>]

No, Stephen, as clear as crystal for me, mainly because the experience and
the reasoning happen here as well. I think writing improves exponentially
for some people, but that between bursts of insight, there are times of
quiet struggle. A student, for example, may need to write three more
essays, applying some insight or technique gleaned from a writers' center,
and that application of that insight might be confusing at first. It
sounds good in the writers' center when you hear it, it might progress
o.k. with a consultant to guide you, but then doing it on your own, well,
a lot of that ease evaporates and it takes a while.

But if the writer keeps at it, works and thinks about it, after a while
things start to make sense, and things fit, and they "suddenly get it." So
then they might all of sudden see some element of their writing hit a new
plateau, and the success might appear to the teacher to be dramatic
(especially for a teacher who only sees final drafts), but for the writer,
it was a matter of steady effort.



-- 
Nick Carbone, Writers' Center Director
CSU Writers' Center (http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/WritingCenter)

ncarbone@lamar.colostate.edu