All Writing is Personal

My friend Barry Lane, the author of a number of books on writing, sent me some interview questions about "voice" and informational writing.  This will sound pretty familiar to all of you, but I thought I'd share it because it seemed timely as you begin writing your research essay drafts.

 How do students approach informational writing differently than narrative essay writing and how  does that affect their voice as writers?

When most students approach personal writing, they intuitively know that the stories they tell are narrated; that is, the telling depends on the writer’s perspective on the experiences she’s exploring.  The most obvious first move in this narration is to invoke the first person, and from there it’s pretty easy for writers to imagine that theirs is the guiding hand, leading readers along.  But when they confront informational writing, most student writers assume that they are required to drop their role as narrators.  This kind of writing is supposed to be “objective,” they think, and consequently they do everything they can to erase themselves from the writing.   The result is that informational seems to lack any kind of guiding hand, and readers often respond by complaining that the writing is “boring.”  Writers of such prose feel the same way.

What can teachers do to help students find their voices when writing about facts and information outside of their own experience? Why is this important?

We have to convince student writers that informational writing is narrated, too, even if it doesn’t invoke the first person.  One theorist talked about this as “presence,” and argued that presence is possible in all kinds of ways beyond self-disclosure.  Finding your own ways of saying things is an obvious way for a writer to leave his signature on the work.  Control of quotation is another.  But so is emphasis, drawing attention to certain interesting facts (and not others).  This is important for students to practice because it further establishes their agency as authors of their own work, even when they’re borrowing information from the work of others.  In this sense, all writing is personal.