Topic: Learning to Write

Question: How do we learn to write?

Answer: “Although The Performing Self never names composition as a field, it assumes that ‘composition’ is something we come to understand by reading and by learning through the example of other writers. It argues that a certain form of close reading (although not the close reading of the New Criticism) is the essential lesson for any writer/reader/thinker.”

Comment: In other words, we learn to write by reading, not by reading only for meaning, but reading as writers, noting how writers achieve their effects. I have often noted that people whose writing I admire claim that they never learned to write in school, but that they were never without a book when growing up. RayS.

Title: “Reconsiderations: ‘Inventing the University’ at 25: An Interview with David Bartholomae.” David Bartholomae and John Schilb. College English (January 2011), 260-282.