Peter Elbow is an American composition scholar whose work on the writing process introduced freewriting as a method and challenged the assumption that writing begins with knowing what you want to say.
Core ideas
- Freewriting: Elbow’s signature method — write without stopping for a set period, don’t edit, don’t pause, don’t reread. The point isn’t to produce good prose but to bypass the internal editor that blocks fluency. Meaning emerges from the act of writing, not before it [@elbow1973].
- First-order and second-order thinking: first-order thinking is generative, associative, and uncritical — it produces material. Second-order thinking is analytical, editorial, and critical — it shapes material. Elbow argued that most writers try to do both at once, which produces neither fluency nor quality [@elbow1981].
- The believing game: before critiquing an idea, try to inhabit it — understand it from the inside, see what it makes possible. This complements the “doubting game” (critical analysis) that academic training emphasizes almost exclusively.
- Writing process over product: Elbow shifted writing instruction from evaluating finished texts to supporting the messy, recursive process of composing. This influenced the “process movement” in composition pedagogy.
Notable works
- Writing Without Teachers (1973)
- Writing with Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process (1981)
- Everyone Can Write: Essays Toward a Hopeful Theory of Writing and Teaching Writing (2000)
Related
- freewriting — the term entry for Elbow’s composing method
- first-order and second-order thinking — the term entry for Elbow’s framework separating generation from evaluation
- revision — Elbow’s separation of generating and revising clarifies what revision is for
- Linda Flower — her cognitive process research provided empirical grounding for Elbow’s observations about composing