Writing in Space and Time

I have been reading an article by Peter Elbow with the title 'The Music of Form: Rethinking Organization in Writing'.

Elbow's main point is that there are two main principles or 'forces' of organisation in play when we write: a force of energy which is time-oriented, and a force of arrangement which is space-oriented. He argues that the teaching of writing has favoured the spatial principle. Teaching has been 'hostage to a spatial metaphor', he says. Our understanding of the temporal principle has lagged behind, dwarfed by 'a monopoly of vision and space in our concept of organisation'.

I think that Elbow's distinction is very useful. That writing is an event in time as much as an arrangement of words in space is powerfully apparent every time we write. We can't escape fully into space and write 'outside' time; but nor can we escape the other way, from space into pure time. Writing - as Kress would say - is 'multi-modal', taking place in both space and time. But, for some reason, space has dominated.

It is maybe an example of what Derrida called' the exorbitant privilege of the eye'.

Energy and Composition

Space and time: the two forces are in play - and at play - whenever we write. Elbow uses the word 'energy' only in relation to the temporal force. I would rather see energy at work in both space and time.

At this point I am thinking of Hiroshige's great painting usually called 'The Wave' (above). The wave that never breaks, but is forever breaking. The painting seems to capture a moment when both spatial and temporal energies are at work and are unresolved by composition, though harnessed by it. The ferocious energy of the wave about to break is both contained by arrangement and precariously threatening to break out of it, to capsize and overwhelm it. Mount Fuji in the background provides a kind of central focus of stability and calm, oddly mirrored by the peaking wave in the foreground. There is the spatial force. But the tumultuous rising and breaking waves on either side seem to introduce a force of time into the painting, as if no frame could hold back its potential power and anarchy.

Composition - when it is alert and convincing and powerful - uses energy of both space and time. Maybe that is why meticulously arranged and structured writing can sometimes seem lifeless and dull. It's got the space, but it has no time.

Too Much Space in the Teaching of Writing?

It seems to me that a heightened awareness of time (a deadline, the rhythm of a sentence, the sequence of ideas in an argument) hits us at certain points when we write; whereas an awareness of space (layout, design, structure) hits us more strongly at other points. But both awarenesses clearly interact. When I say that a piece of writing 'unfolds', it seems to me that I am drawing simultaneously on metaphors of both space and time.

I think that Elbow is right in saying that the teaching of writing has relied so heavily on spatial arrangement. I can hear it in my own teaching. I can hear myself stressing the need for 'outline' and 'structure' when I talk about 'organisation', rather than qualities of rhythm, for example, or voice, or perplexity. Or the myriad ways in which the flow of language can show the movement of thought.

I stress the need for writer's to 'envision' a text, to 'see it' in advance. I can hear myself recommending 'signposts' and 'mapping', urging the need to 'orientate the reader' and 'give the reader direction', showing examples of 'planning' and 'overviews', underlining the importance of 'focus' and 'clarity'.

All these words privilege the idea that writing takes place primarily in space as an arrangement, and suppress the idea that writing takes place in time as an event. They favour the eye over the ear, the voice, and the rest of the body too. They favour the idea that writing reflects thought rather than moves through it.

Peter Elbow's essay shows me a limitation in my teaching, but also points to an area of growth. For some time I have been uneasy about a spatial bias in my teaching, and his essay makes me aware of it; but it also releases into theoretical light the alternative, countervailing energies of time which are always present in writing and which complement - and complicate - space.

A few months back I was leading a workshop on drafting. I became aware of the fixation on space in my approach to writing and started to think about the rest of the body in the act of writing. Writing, I realised, is a listening, a speaking, a tactile experience, a physical movement, even at times an olfactory moment, and not just a visual projection. Writing listens, talks, moves, feels, even smells. It breathes, screams, whispers, shouts for joy. And we use these words all the time to describe written communication. And yet my teaching seemed to neglect them.

In trying to put across the traditional idea of 'structure' in my teaching I want to release at the same time notions of time. So when I talk about 'signposts' I also want to release talk about 'transition'. When I talk about 'mapping' I also want to talk about 'journeys'. So metaphors of space and time can be made to move in and out of each other. Or to release one another.

Elbow's essay does what a great essay should do: it illuminates what I have already experienced, and beckons me to what I have not yet known.

Peter Elbow, The Music of Form: Rethinking Organization' in College Composition and Communication, Volume 57: 4, June 2006