Revisiting "Elastic English"

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From the Editors:

In Praxis Vol. 16, no. 1, Sidney Thompson offered us a vision of “Elastic English,” drawing on traditions of mindfulness and also on insights from Transcendentalist literature to consider the power and potential for transformation in the writing consultation. Here, Thompson offers further thoughts on what writers and consultants stand to gain from the experience of consulting and from taking this approach.

Revisiting Elastic English

We would fail, especially as tutors, if we refused to demonstrate to students how inspiring and beautiful the process of revision can be. While Jeff Brooks is right when he says that students “find ingenious ways of forcing [a tutor] into the role of editor” (132), I say he is wrong to cynically shut the door on their hopes of improved papers. We instead need to find ingenious ways of our own to impress upon students the promise and charm of what we do—how we dig, how we labor, how we investigate choices, and how by degree we uncover and recreate. In 2016, Lori Salem offered a sad indictment of writing centers in relation to student success: “This is not a place where transformation is likely to happen” (“What’s Wrong”). If Salem’s research is correct and represents most, if not all, writing centers, then we as consultants have an obligation to change our environment. We cannot allow either a passive voice or a passive stance to suit us. Of course, students will not want for themselves the gifts we possess if they never witness them live, in action, in a similar manner that a Transcendentalist must first make personal contact with nature before his “transparent eyeball” reveals itself. If we must provide the student “the bare ground” Emerson stands upon and “the blithe air” that bathes his head to increase the chances that, for the student, “all mean egotism vanishes,” then we must. Students may indeed seek our help entirely for better grades, as Brooks warns, but we owe them a transcendental moment or two to make that vision possible.

At other times, sure, I choose to hold back offering an alternative to students’ writing choices because fostering “a collaborative atmosphere” is imperative (Gamache 4). Exercising my elasticity, I instead at times wait in silence for the writer to offer an alternative of her own, to have the opportunity to dig and make magic herself. A consultant needs to know, if he doesn’t already, that he doesn’t always have to provide an answer. Highlighting a problem area and prompting an alternative can be sufficient assistance, and sometimes the most helpful practice because it reinforces trust (my trust in the writer and her trust in herself). The greatest false assumption among writers might be that they are incapable of meaningful revision, so let’s be willing to illustrate that the bulk of the hard labor of revision is more about putting the time into doing it than about seeking privileged knowledge from a writing specialist.

Granted, we all have our comfort zones, but let’s be willing to alter our pedagogical approach to suit the writer as much as possible, as much as it feels right to both parties, for mutual mindfulness. Let’s recall Steve Sherwood’s declaration in “Portrait of the Tutor as an Artist: Lessons No One Can Teach”: “By embracing surprise, refining their sensitivity to kairos, developing a capacity for improvisation, and cultivating a taste for ‘flow’ experiences, [tutors] have achieved a high level of ars or techne and, in the process, gained valuable insights into writing, rhetoric, and human nature” (109).

Remaining positive and, therefore, mindful might just be the most difficult task of a consultant, especially when fatigued. Sometimes the only real reward for our labor is the satisfaction that we have helped another, or that we do the teaching most teachers can only dream of, but that sort of self-congratulatory praise doesn’t always satisfy. There’s just not enough meat on the bone. One way tutorials feed me and keep me grateful for the work I do is by remaining mindful that I’m learning, for I enjoy learning. Sure, professional consultants teach student writers, but writers may have far more knowledge on a particular subject or in a specialized field than their consultants. Often I learn as much as the writer does, and I am not shy about showing my enthusiasm for her research and insights, to feed her in ways that corrected punctuation, for example, never can.

I didn’t know, for instance, that Ignaz Semmelweis, nicknamed “the savior of mothers,” was the first physician to propose the practice of handwashing. He instituted a policy in 1847 in the maternity clinic at the Vienna General Hospital that physicians cleanse their hands with a chlorinated lime solution between handling a cadaver for an autopsy and assisting a mother in childbirth. Even though his policy drastically lowered the mortality rate at that obstetrical clinic, the medical community ostracized him for suggesting doctors, who were gentlemen, could possibly have unclean hands. Upon the recommendation of fellow physicians, he found himself committed to an insane asylum, where the guards beat him to death. This tragic narrative of Semmelweis’ life is as dramatic as human history gets. As a fiction writer always on the lookout for a story to tell or retell, I appreciate the nursing student who shared her research with me.

And I didn’t know that pharmaceutical companies spend twice as much on marketing as they do on research. I’m not altogether surprised to learn this fact, but I’m nevertheless heartened I can now better support my own personal politics. Thanks to the business major who shared this paper with me.

And I didn’t know that “Nihao” is a Chinese greeting limited to strangers. In fact, the Chinese have no greeting for someone the speaker knows. Instead, more intimately, the speaker simply says the addressee’s name, or he or she acknowledges mindfully what the friend or family member is doing: “Junyu, I see you are shopping.” Thanks to the professor of Modern Language Studies, for entrusting me with this scholarship.

And I didn’t know that the majority of the disciples in da Vinci’s The Last Supper are too impulsively like Judas themselves. Distracted beyond reason and faith, lost in their own discomfort due to Jesus’s announcement that one of them will betray Him, they give in to wild gesticulations and private discussions. Ironically, only Judas appears to gaze steadily at the Messiah. The others appear to have forgotten that only Jesus would know for certain the future and, therefore, the answer to the question they seek, yet they turn from Him, not to Him, as if everyone else must be a better source of knowledge or comfort. Bless you for your own transparent eyeball, thoughtful student of religion! Your mindfulness about mindfulness is inspiring. You learned from me, as I learned from you. Since there is no painting to tell the tale of our reciprocity, our elasticity, I’ll be sure to pass along the experience to those like-minded enough to listen.

Works Cited

Brooks, Jeff. “Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work.” The St. Martin’s  Sourcebook for Writing Tutors, edited by Christina Murphy and Steve Sherwood, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011, pp. 128-132.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Circles.” Nature and Selected Essays. Viking Penguin, 1982, pp. 225-238.

---. “Experience.” Nature and Selected Essays. Viking Penguin, pp. 285-311.

--- “Fate.” Nature and Selected Essays. Viking Penguin, pp. 361-391.

--- “Nature.” Nature and Selected Essays. Viking Penguin, pp. 35-82.

---. “The Transcendentalist.” Nature and Selected Essays. Viking Penguin, pp. 239-258.

Gamache, Paul. Zen and the Art of the Writing Tutorial. The Writing Lab Newsletter,  28(2), Oct 2003, pp. 1-5.

Salem, Lori. “Decision . . . Decisions: Who Chooses to Use the Writing Center?” The Writing  Center Journal, 35.2, 2016, pp. 147-171.

Sherwood, Steve. The St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors, edited by Christina Murphy and Steve Sherwood, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011, pp. 97-111.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden and Civil Disobedience. Viking Penguin, 1983.

Author Bio

Sidney Thompson, Ph.D. holds an MFA in creative writing and a Ph.D. in American literature. He is the author of the short story collection Sideshow, winner of Foreword Magazine’s Silver Award for Short Story Collection of the Year (2006). His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in numerous anthologies and in such literary journals as American Literary Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Cleaver Magazine, The Cortland Review, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine (UK), Grey Sparrow Journal, The Human Journal, Paste Magazine, Prick of the Spindle, Rhino, The Southern Review, storySouth, and Waxwing Literary Journal. He serves as a Writing Consultant for the William L. Adams Center for Writing at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.