LAST NAME 1 SAMPLE MODEL TO SHARE 1 Alexis Teagarden FYE Orientation 20 January 2015 1,221 words Synthesis Essay: What Motivates Writing? Those who take writing as their subject frequently turn to the question of what motivates writers; is it self-interested self-reflection, or is it the desire to engage with a particular audience unlike the self? Those who fall into the former camp, claiming that too frequently the writer’s ego influences her subject matter, disdain personal interest as a motivating factor for writing. Those in the latter camp, noting the larger and varied social networks to which a writer appeals, take a less moralistic tone in their argumentation. In addition to these differences in tone, both camps focus on different genres of writing. Those who point to the writer’s narcissistic tendencies usually critique authors of fiction and personal essays, while those who point to the writer’s engagement of audience focus on the production of non-fiction. Despite their different attitude towards writers and the different kinds of writing they explore, the question of what motivates writing in general connects to larger issues about writing’s social relevance and utility, as well as to issues of the writer’s sense of self in relation to the larger “discourse communities” (Porter) to which she belongs. The Narcissism Camp Proponents of the narcissism camp, such as Virginia Woolf, Laura Miller, and Cristina Nehring, connect essay and fiction writers’ self-absorption to larger cultural shifts. Writing in 1905, Woolf claims that the overabundance of personal essays works to sate the reading public’s LAST NAME 2 “stale palate” (1), which has lately been inundated with printed matter. Indeed, as more people are able to write, and as the ability to circulate printed material becomes easier, the market floods with essays that “indulge one’s egoism to the full” (2). Unlike Woolf, Miller and Nehring do not point fingers at the reading public for encouraging the circulation of narcissistic writing. In fact, Nehring suggests that fewer readers turn to the essay because essayists have “lost their nerve” (2) and decline to address any “big theories, useful verities, [or] daring pronouncements” worthy of the reader’s time or interest (7). Nehring does, however, indict the culture more broadly, if not essay readers in particular, for “grow[ing]…weary of [the] larger truths” that personal essays, by writers like Montaigne and Seneca, once revealed (4). Miller also identifies today’s writing as a “narcissistic commerce” that has sullied the once-pure spaces of reading, such as book stores, with events meant to celebrate the writer (3). National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), Miller opines, celebrates the faux-writer’s ability to produce writing—no matter the quality—at the expense of creating works worthy of appreciation by the now-dwindling population of readers. Despite the differences among writers exploring this problem, members of the narcissism camp illuminate the larger issues of how the content and form of personal writing is influenced by cultural trends. Woolf, Nehring, and Miller imply that larger forces—from increases in printed material, writing how-to guides, and The Best American Essay anthologists, respectively— influence the rise in writing that is self-interested. Whether the culture produces more narcissistic essayists, or whether essays like this produce the demand for such writing cannot be determined, making the logic of these arguments somewhat circular. These thinkers also paint writers with a wide brush, overlooking exceptions to the rules of egoism; moreover, Woolf, Miller, and Nehring fail to consider the kinds of audiences these self-absorbed writers LAST NAME 3 actually reach, ultimately obscuring important cultural and economic differences within and among genres and their readers. While the narcissism camp maintains a consistent focus on writers, this limited view keeps them from exploring the particulars of how writing circulates and where narcissistic writers fit in the larger field of writing studies. The Audience Camp Proponents of the audience camp, including Mark McGurl, Derek Thompson, James Porter, and Mark Richardson suggest that writers are motivated by their real and imagined audiences. All five thinkers believe the writer is in conversation with an audience that has particular expectations or literacies that may or may not match their own. Writers in this camp see even self-motivation as a larger cultural construct and not simply as an attempt to gratify the writer’s ego. McGurl’s study of the creative writing program, The Program Era, demystifies the creative writing instructions to “find your voice” and “write what you know.” McGurl describes how these seemingly self-motivated dictums for writing were responses to the increasing institutionalization of creative writing. These instructions are, in fact, constructs of writing pedagogy that speak to the larger expectations that creative writing be an extension of the individual writer. This emphasis on the individual is itself culturally motivated, and thus implicates the purportedly narcissistic creative writer’s motivations in a larger culture of creative writing. In Thompson’s piece, “Why Nobody Writes About Popular TV Shows,” he identifies how genres—and by extension, writers and their publications, or shows and their TV networks— target particular reader- or viewerships. This is relevant both to the kind of programming on broadcast and premium TV and the kind of shows mass media reporters write about. Because of LAST NAME 4 economic conditions of subscription, premium channels “produce television that is less formulaic, [and] more attractive to the writing- and-reading-about-TV crowd” (3); therefore, TV critics write about shows that presumably are less accessible to broadcast viewers and mainstream press readers who are part of the broader TV audience. Similarly, Porter considers how writers of various media, like the Declaration of Independence, advertisements, and news reports, are not completely “free” to create novel prose so much as they recirculate and borrow from a shared lexicon, or “discourse community” (34). The lack of freedom Porter underscores is not directly related to economic conditions, as noted in Thompson’s essay, though he identifies how texts address tacit audience expectations. Discussing the role of fiction in the composition classroom, Richardson explains how “the posture of reverence for literary products still determines [the student writer’s] attitude and approach” to their work (282). Like Porter, Richardson pays attention to the varied considerations a writer has when reaching her audience. He acknowledges that writers may not always feel that they have the authority to be part of a conversation with which they aren’t familiar. For example, student writers may not be equipped with the tools to master the meaning of texts like Poe’s “Annabel Lee,” so helping student writers engage their own literacies when making meaning of literature can make them personally invested in their composition. This camp is less exclusively focused on the writer than is the narcism camp, and the kinds of writing they consider is more diverse, making the camp somewhat less cohesive than its opposition. This can be a strength and a weakness, however. These thinkers can help us understand the reciprocal process of meaning making that goes on between the writer and audience, but because each is concerned with different factors that shape how writing engages its audience—from economic, to intertextual, to compositional—this camp is more loosely defined. LAST NAME 5 Conclusions Ultimately the narcissism camp’s criticism of writerly self-absorption suggests that social context and audience should influence how and what one writes, causing their camp to bleed into the audience camp. While both camps ponder the factors that motivate writing, they nevertheless remain divided in their emphasis on what motivates the form that writing takes: the writer or her audience. LAST NAME 6 Works Cited McGurl, Mark. The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009. Kindle file. Miller, Laura. “Better Yet: Don’t Write that Novel”. Salon.com. 02 Nov. 2010. Web. 29 Dec. 2014. Nehring, Cristina. “What’s Wrong with the American Essay”. Truthdig.com. 29 Nov. 2007. Web. 29 Web. 2014. Porter, James. “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community”. Rhetoric Review. 5.1 (Autumn 1986): 34-47). jstor.org. Web. 29 Dec. 2014. Richardson, Mark. “Who Killed Annabel Lee: Writing about Literature in the Composition Classroom”. College English. 66.3 (Jan. 2004): 278-93. jstor.org. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. Thompson, Derek. “Why Nobody Writes about Popular TV Shows”. The Atlantic. May 2004. theatlantic.com. Web. 29 Dec. 2014. Woolf, Virginia. “The Decay of Essay-Writing”. [Source under review]
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