Elbow, Peter. "The Teacherless Writing Class." Writing Without Teachers. London: Oxford University Press, 1973.

"I have been speaking till now as though writing were a transaction entirely with yourself. It is a transaction with yourself -- lonely and frustrating -- and I have wanted, in fact, to increase that transaction: help you do more business with yourself. But writing is also a transaction with other people. Writing is not just getting things down on paper, it is getting things inside someone else's head. If you wish to improve your writing you must also learn to do more business with other people. That is the goal of the teacherless writing class" (76).

Once you figure out what your work is about -- the work's theme or thesis -- writing must be collaborative in order to know if it is effective. If you are just trying to figure out something for yourself, it's OK to journal; the process of understanding your thoughts by putting them on the page is enough. However, when you want someone else to understand those thoughts, you must consider your audience, and how you can relate those thoughts so they are understood and interesting to someone else.

"Writing is a string you send out to connect yourself with other consciousnesses, but usually you never have the opportunity to feel anything at the other end. How can you tell whether you've got a fish if the line always feels slack? ... You need movies of people's mind while they read your words (to improve your writing). But you need this for a sustained period of time -- at least two or three months" (77).

This chapter gives steps in how to create an effective workshop through use of collaboration and constantly creating writing for others to consider. There are several steps and exercises to consider; I'll list a couple of the prompts I found especially interesting here:

1. Describe a person, place, or incident that means a lot to you. (This could work to spark creativity, description, narration, and expository writing.)

2. Describe such a person, place, or incident but from an unfamiliar angle; for example, describe the place a though you were blind and could only know it through your other senses; describe the person as though you had only met him once or as though it were he describing himself; describe the incident as though it had never happened and you were only imagining it (good for writing for the senses, description, and creating character).

3. Describe something while you are in a definite mood. Or pretend to be in that mood describing it. Or write in a particular mood. Don't mention the mood in the writing and get readers to tell you what mood comes through (81) (Good for creating character and voice).