Peter Elbow: taught so many of us the way to write well

Someone passed last month who may have had a big impact on you, though you most likely haven’t heard of him.

Peter Elbow was not a fundraising person. He was an academic, through and through. He wrote a fairly important book about Chaucer.

But that’s not why I’m celebrating him today. Peter Elbow changed the way writing is taught in universities. And that has made it possible for many more people to become proficient at writing — people who under the old way of teaching, were pretty much blocked from being successful at writing well. A recent New York Times obituary put it this way: Peter Elbow, Professor Who Transformed Freshman Comp, Dies at 89.

The old way of teaching writing (which is still very common) is to assign a topic and a fairly rigid structure. Then you tell students to figure out how to get it written. “Sink or swim,” we used to say.

A lot of them sink.

Most of those who manage to swim are those equipped with mental tools that allow them to think through and organize their thoughts before (or while) they write about it. That’s a talent, a gift, that most people don’t have. It has nothing to do with intelligence. It’s a talent that is wildly over-represented among English teachers. “Sink or swim” worked for them, so they think it should work for everyone. (There’s no small “we are superior” gate-keeping attitude about it.)

As a result, a lot of people have bad experiences with writing while in college, and come to the conclusion that they can’t write. So they don’t write. Whatever it was they have to say to the world either never gets said, or they find some other way to say it.

It seems Peter Elbow was one of those people without the gift. He struggled with writing early in his academic career. But instead of washing out, he examined writing closely and realize he could do it by following a process that rigorously split “writing” from “editing.”

He didn’t invent that — advice like “write drunk; edit sober” was already out there. But he turned a careful eye on it and began exploring techniques and approaches.

And built a way to teach writing that acknowledged and emphasized the process.

I crossed paths with him when I was a graduate student at Stony Brook University in New York in the 1980s. He was head of the writing program, in charge of a stable of grad students who were teaching the basic English 101 courses. We called it “process writing.” It leaned heavily on the separation of writing from editing, and various techniques for writing.

Including free writing. (I’ve written about it elsewhere, including at The secret weapon for writing better, faster, and easier)

Process writing was controversial then. Still is, though less so. It was thought of as a touchy-feely, hippy-dippy approach from the 70s.

What does all this have to do with you? If you got any of your formal writing training from people who followed Elbow’s principles, you are likely a better writer than you would be otherwise. And there’s a decent chance you did. You have Peter Elbow to thank.

If you learned the “sink or swim” way, it’s not too late to learn about and use process writing to better your life, your writing, and your fundraising results.

Here are Peter Elbow’s books you might want to read:

• Writing without Teachers
• Writing With Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process
• Vernacular Eloquence: What Speech Can Bring to Writing

Peter Elbow
1935 – 2025
Memory Eternal