The Music of Writing: Eminent Writers' Reflections on Written Composition

• In Event: How Writing Works: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the Processes of Composition

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
The opening part of this presentation introduces the multidisciplinary orientation of the symposium. The objective of the presentation is also to report selected results from four-year multidisciplinary study of writing in order to contribute new understanding about the processes of writing and hence how writing might be taught more effectively.

Theoretical framework
Deweyan pragmatist philosophy bridges long standing epistemological debates while also attending explicitly to the practice of teaching. Understanding writing as both instrumental and consummatory, terms from Dewey’s theory of communication (Dewey, 1998/1925), was an important frame for exploration of composition in writing and composition in music.

Modes of inquiry
The mode of enquiry for the wider project included a new account of philosophy, theory and history of writing, from the invention of the alphabet to the creation of the internet and social media in order to situate the work. A new three-year longitudinal empirical study of young people’s creativity and writing was also undertaken. However, this presentation reports the findings from a substantial new systematic analysis of in-depth interviews with a selection of the world’s leading writers that was part of the wider project.

Data sources
The data source, for the results reported in this presentation, is Interviews with eminent writers initiated from the 1950s onwards, published in four printed volumes (and subsequently online). An abductive approach to qualitative data analysis (Atkinson and Delamont, 2005) supported by NVivo software was used to identify five main themes, and a range of subthemes, that revealed patterns of responses from the writers.

Results
The results reveal the thinking underpinning eminent writers’ writing, including regular references to music. The analysis and synthesis of these references to music developed the concept of the writer’s ear, e.g. for written language and for the sounds of music, to encapsulate metaphorically how writing works. The concept of the writer’s ear explains the ability to ‘read like a writer’, which involves not only admiring writing, and engaging emotionally, but also perceiving the techniques that writers use. The concept is a juxtaposition of the linguistic distinction between seeing and reading with the musical distinction between hearing and listening. The writer’s ear is instrumental in the initial attention to a wide range of relevant sources for writing: for example the previous publications in the field. This consideration of previous work is part of the writer’s drive for originality. The writer’s ear also attunes the rhythms of the words, phrases and sentences, in a published output, that is needed ultimately to convince people of the value of the writing.

Scientific or scholarly significance
The work, in particular its comparison of text and music, provides new knowledge about how writing works, some implications for teaching writing, and recommends some new lines of multidisciplinary research.

Author

• Dominic Wyse, Institute of Education - London