A Writer's Studio Event:
A Conversation with Dennis Lynch
Rebekah Shultz Colby

When Doug Hesse asked about the differences betweeb Dennis' writing process for documents he needs to write in his position as writing program administrator (WPA) and writing for publication, Dennis said that he was amazed that he could compose on the fly so well as a WPA. For instance, his memos could often be quite lengthy, but he could write them clearly and quickly even eloquently at times. His writing process for CCCCs or for an article is quite labored in contrast. He admitted that this difference probably lay in the fact that he is writing within two different writing situations. For instance, when he composes, he thinks of the audiences for each quite differently. As a WPA, the audience is quite clear and the exigency is even clearer; he often is compelled to be more persuasive, but he understands exactly why he needs to be more persuasive. The audience for a potentially published piece, in contrast, is more vague and amorphous, slipping and sliding, so he is constantly second-guessing himself as he writes. To confound the problem, this audience is also much more demanding, forcing him to spend quite a bit of time arguing for his own authority.

Although he doesnt participate on the WPA list-serv, he, along with Doug, marveled at the eloquence, insightfulness, and obvious amounts of time that go into composing some of the posts. Both also agreed that many of those posts should be saved.

While he was editing the WPA journal he actually stopped writing for publication for awhile. He believes that when we read eloquent, well-composed writing, we internalize those structures and begin to utilize them within our own writing so that these patterns tend to flow. However, as editor for the WPA journal, he was reading so many works in progress that were choppy and incomplete that it paralyzed his own writing process for a time. It was also demoralizing to see people spending years on a project and then see all of this work only materialize as one fairly short article. Finally, as editor, he would get his head so entirely into someone elses project, that in offering them revision suggestions, he felt as if he was basically writing alongside them. This, of course, would exhaust him so much that it would keep him from engaging in his own writing projects.

Now that he is no longer the editor of the WPA journal, one of his most recent writing projects has been co-writing a textbook, compose/design/advocate: a rhetoric for integrating the written, visual, and oral, with Anne. Although Dennis was originally in charge of the writing and Anne was in charge of the graphics, Dennis actually ended up helping Anne quite a bit with the layout and design, which shocked him. And of course, Anne helped quite a bit with preliminary drafts and revision. As far as his physical writing space for this project, he spent a lot of time downstairs in the kitchen so that he could use the kitchen table to lay out pages in order to physically see the structure of his writing laid out on the table. He is currently helping Anne with the upcoming handbook.

Finally, he ended his conversation with Doug by explaining that he disliked when compositionists closed down investigation in further theory by instantly wanting all theory to be directly applicable to writing pedagogy. Compositionists always want to know what its good for, when I think we can still ask the question in another way and explore the theory further. Then, after scholars have spent more time examining and discussing theory, they can open it up for pedagogy. However, forcing theoretical questions to conform to pedagogy too soon, limits theorys focus and power. It limits the purview of theory and closes it off.

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