Topic: Why Do We Write?

10-second review: Although college teachers gripe about the need to publish, their satisfaction in doing so has nothing to do with royalties, which rarely come to those who publish. The satisfaction is internal.

Title: “One Writer’s Secrets.” D M Murray. College Composition and Communication (May 1986), 147-152. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Summary: “The true rewards [of writing for publication] are internal—the satisfaction of asking your own questions and finding your own answers.” p. 153.

Comment: I have always been intimidated by those who criticize writing teachers like me who do not make the writing “real,” i.e., for real audiences for read purposes, whose audience is only the teacher. I find my approach hard to defend as other teachers’ students transform communities with their writing.

But maybe the relevance of students’ writing for the teacher, beyond learning to write, lies in this article in which Donald M. Murray suggests the real rewards of writing for publication are internal—the satisfaction of asking your own questions and finding your own answers.

Perhaps this inner satisfaction, which occurs in any number of circumstances, justifies students who learn to write by writing for the writing teacher. That writing might be of interest to other people—friends, parents, relatives and even the audience at large—and therefore I try to find ways to publish that writing, but its real significance and reward still lies in the inner satisfaction of asking one’s own questions and finding one’s own answers. RayS.