Sarah's Response

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#633

“Whether the word arrived easily or by dint of struggle—whether it’s still in mind or already written—we know it’s wrong”(v).

When I started writing for a living, writing became less fun. Not that I don’t still love it, but I feel so much pressure on each word I type, as if the entire piece hangs on “correctness” of one word. When I was younger, I used to write stories alone in my room and was guided more by emotion and the poetry of the words. Felt sense is not going back to childhood, but writing as a child and writing poetry was when I feel the most “tuned in.”

When I was studying Creative Writing in undergrad, we were encouraged to take some of our writing classes pass/fail. While this didn’t help me in a lot of ways, it helped me develop my craft in an environment that was focused on the writing itself, rather than the pressure of getting the right words (for a grade). At the end of each class, I always wished I took the class for a grade, because I always did very well without all the stress of a grade.

But in fact, it’s not the medium of writing itself that does the most to drown out our felt sense. It’s the situation in which people so often do their writing: writing for teachers, writing for scholarly publication, writing for tenure. So often, writing is done for someone with authority over us who will judge whether our words are acceptable or not—which tends to mean whether we are acceptable or not. (vii)

I couldn’t have said this any better myself. I think if we can learn to tune out those voices a little bit, things would be a lot easier.

And while felt sense initially seems like it would apply best to more creative endeavors (see Irwin Leopondo’s quote on page 13), maybe the most important place it is needed is in research papers and more professional work. I think I would be a lot less stressed writing research papers if I at least started them with less frantic energy. I’m excited to learn about the guidelines and see how they can help with my process.

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